A universe that is birthed, plays out and ends all the while no one was, is, nor ever will be there to be aware of it, seems, ultimately pointless. — Benj96

A universe that is birthed, plays out and ends might very well be ultimately pointless even if it at some brief interlude during its existence is was fleetingly, partially and myopically observed from within.

But the Source and Origin of the power to be, to know, and to experience, presumably exists eternally in some never-never-land that we have no access to, since our ability to experience is limited by the boundaries of space & time. — Gnomon

Being, knowing and experiencing are necessarily temporal - that is a key idea of process philosophy. The idea of time as fundamental is not shared by either materialism - in which the most fundamental elements of reality are atemporal leading more than a few renowned scientists to the conclusion that time is either a natural emergence (albeit an inexplicably radical one) or an illusion (albeit an inexplicably convincing and persistent one) or idealism - in which the ideal 'realm' is necessarily timeless and changeless (but gives no plausible account of how on earth time and change might possibly have emerged from changelessness in no time at all)...

For me that is "the difference the makes the difference" between modern idealism/materialism and post-modern process thinking. The "power to experience" surely presupposes time (if not space) - how could anything have an experience in "no time"? Putting 'experience' at ground level forces one to accept that time and change are fundamental to reality. There can be no experiential reality without time and change...one (any "one", any kind of "one") cannot experience changelessness.

Ouch! A hard-cover of Unsnarling the World Knot is listed for $894.90 on Amazon. It's as way-over my budget as Whitehead's "reality" is way-over my head. — Gnomon

Try the library - that's where I found it.

"occasions of experience" didn't ring any bells for me...Can you give a real-world example of one of those "little droplets of experience"? — Gnomon

You can use one's own experiences - that's why these counter-intuitive notions seem like "common-sense" intuition to me. For example, suppose I look up at the night sky and see a star...that experience begins with a physical interaction - a sensory stimulus - a physical "prehension" perhaps(?) - my eye intercepts a stream of photons and that initiates a sequence of physical/mental processes that combined becomes the experience of "seeing a star" - I can break that sequence down by abstraction and analysis, I can explain (at least I could if I knew enough about it) how the sensory apparatus functions physically and how the signal processing apparatus of the optical nerves and the brain turn the raw data into a mental image (actually I can't explain that but maybe someone could)...etc...but the experience itself cannot actually be divided - I cannot have a half, or a third, of the experience of seeing a star - its either all or nothing (although sometimes - often - I might not be acutely aware of seeing it) - it is in that sense that "occasions of experience" are "atomic" - they are not themselves divisible...but they might be nested or overlapping and at our level of experience they almost invariably (if not absolutely always) are. Each moment of a human life is an impossibly tangled web of overlapping, nested and intertwined events - and yet, because of the organismic unity of the human individual, each moment becomes an indivisible occasion in its own right. But if you dig right down - even quarks and electrons (whatever they really are) are doing the same thing - that is, existing as a sequence of indivisible 'experiential' occasions' - moments during which they prehend - i.e. interact with in a 'sensible' (but obviously not cognitive) manner (at this level it is nothing like "apprehension" or "comprehension" but it is nonetheless a kind of "grasping" - the world around them on a much more fundamental level.

I have no idea whether this is helping or hindering your prehension of the idea...maybe I should stop there for now and see which bits draw the most flak before setting the bearings for the next leg of my flight of fancy!

Please give me a brief synopsis of how "the bipolar panexperiential physicalism" softens the hard problem of Metaphysical Consciousness in a Physical Body. — Gnomon

Gnomon - I really don't think I can do this question justice right now...but the essential idea is that the actual entities composing reality are "occasions of experience" (a la Whitehead)...little "droplets" (perhaps) of experiential reality which all interact with one another to a greater or lesser degree depending on the complexity of their "aggregations". Some "aggregations" are just that - e.g. a rock or a solar system - others are organized composite units or organisms - like a human being for example - discrete individuals. All such "occasions" and (obviously) their aggregations are necessarily extensive both spatially and temporally, which is to say they endure across a finite time and space and they each have a physical and a mental "pole" - the best way I can think of to describe this is to say they each have a "WHAT it is" mental "description" and a "what it IS" physical "presence". These are the two poles of the "bipolar" part of my comment.

The key assumption is that everything that exists has both of these poles and exists as a temporal, "experiencing" (experiential) reality - which is really only to say that they relate to the world somehow and that this 'relating' makes a difference - like I said earlier - 'matter minds and minds matter' (and that seemingly enigmatic phrase can be unpacked in any number of ways...which I'll leave you to ponder).

The upshot of all this is that the kind of experience we think of as human experience is really no more than a rather complex, (self-)organized composite of the kind of "experience" that simpler aggregates (such as atoms, molecules, cells...etc.) "enjoy".

So just as, say, an electron "feels" the influence of neighbouring particles (and "fields" - whatever they are) and "responds" accordingly - in turn adding its own causal influence into the mix in the process - so a human "feels" its circumstances in relation to its own reality in the world and responds accordingly - but in a much more complex and organismic manner. From this emerges what we think of as human consciousness - awareness, imagination, purpose - and in a much more complicated manner than a particle (of course), adds its own causal influence into the mix - "mind" interacting creatively but perfectly naturally with matter by virtue of the continual merging and overlapping of mental/physical bipolar "droplets" of experiential reality. There is no dualistic barrier - no timeless ideality, and no mindless materiality - just a continual flow of fundamentally temporal (pan)experiential reality - a stream composed of drops of experience - discrete events - felt, prehended - by the discrete organismic mental/physical individuals that both emerge from and give rise to it as time rolls on. No hard problem of mind/matter interaction remains in this scheme because there is no matter that is not minded and not mind that is not mattered.

There - I told you I couldn't do it justice! A better explanation is in David Ray Griffin's book (but he took over 200 pages):

https://www.amazon.com/Unsnarling-World-Knot-Consciousness-Freedom-Mind-Body/dp/1556357559

Ideality and Reality are merely different aspects of the same singular Ultimate Reality, which I call G*D. G*D is not "out there", but everywhere. — Gnomon

If you were to stop there, we would be in almost complete agreement...and we would both be saying:

G*D is the ... universe, then it must be Natural and Temporal — Gnomon

Not "known" universe - not limited to human knowledge, but accessible to human knowledge to some degree although even on this understanding there would always be a significant extent to which "God" would exist

beyond the boundaries of the reality we experience — Gnomon

because our ability to experience the reality we inhabit is limited.

The problem is that you then go a step further and place God's "primordial nature" beyond reality, you take the "mental" aspect of reality and insist that it must preempt (logically if not temporally) any and all "physical" aspects of reality.

That is the step I am objecting to. I can see neither logical nor empirical grounds for that assumption. As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no logical (much less observational) reason to assume that "God" must exist prior to the universe.

Are ideas in a human mind in a physical world real in any sense? — Gnomon

Of course they are...oh dear! So many misconceptions and misinterpretations - where to start...

OK - virtual particles are NOT particles that are virtually real, they are real phenomena that are virtually particles in the sense that they affect the world around them in a manner similar to the particles their effects resemble the effects of...I know - I'm not doing very well at clarifying this...they are not particles that are virtually real, they are real effects that are virtually particles.

Just because Qualia and Ideas are not reducible to Atoms & Void, are they "unconnected to reality"? — Gnomon

"Atoms and void"? Where on earth do you get the idea that my idea is that everything real should be reducible to "atoms and void"? My point is not that ideas must be made of atoms, but that an atom cannot be separated from the "idea" of an atom - not my "idea" of an atom, not even a scientific consensus "idea" of an atom but the universe's "idea" of an atom. Atoms always come together with the idea of an atom otherwise they cannot function like an atom and if they can't function like an atom then they are not an atom. As you may recall me repeating ad nauseum in past conversations, you can't have one without t'other - ever...there are no disembodied ideas.

Does your worldview have a role for Metaphysics? — Gnomon

Of course - I am proposing a panexperiential physicalist process view of reality incorporating a mental/physical bipolar nature of "things" - how can that not have a role for metaphysics? It is a speculative metaphysics - it would be absurd for a speculative metaphysical scheme to deny the reality of either speculation or metaphysics. No - the question is not whether there is a role for metaphysics, but whether it is correct to insist on the primacy or fundamental role of metaphysics in the unfolding of the real world. Is the metaphysical aspect fundamental or is it co-emergent with the unfolding reality? That's the question.

My Ideality merely acknowledges that Ideas and Qualia are non-physical, or not-yet-physical (i.e. metaphysical). — Gnomon

Right - so this is where we are getting to the crux of the matter - you have them as strictly non-physical - I have them as a non-physical aspect of the otherwise physical world - fully embedded in the reality of the real world, even of they do seem to transcend the limits of space and time in a way that no strictly physical reality (i.e. an electron, an elephant or whatever) could ever do. But I'm not even convinced that ideas really do transcend time and space anyway - can you give an example, for example, of an idea that is not in someone's head (however that happens)?

Can you swallow Imaginary possibilities (ideas, ideals, universals) as an aspect of Cosmic Reality? — Gnomon

All those ARE aspects of cosmic reality...what I can't swallow is ideas, ideals and universals as primordial, creative, pre-cosmic supernaturalistic 'reality'.

I can agree that G*D is "gnosis" in that sense, but Wilberg and I part ways when he claims that ordinary humans are capable of god-like Gnosis. We may be more gnostic than animals, but IMHO, even Einstein was not supernaturally imaginative and creative.. — Gnomon

And I would say that even "God" was not supernaturally imaginative and creative...that, in a nutshell, is where we differ. "God" is only as "gnostic" (and imaginative and creative) as "being" the (intricately interconnected) universe permits "him" to be and I am only as "gnostic" (and imaginative and creative) as "being" (the minuscule but also intricately interconnected) part of the universe (that I am) permits me to be.

you still seem to see something “unconnected to reality” in my worldview. — Gnomon

I do and it is reasonably well captured in this excerpt from your quotation of Wilberg:

"God does indeed not exist as any actual being or entity that we can be aware of, but is no less real for that --- being the primordial field of potentiality that is the power behind all actualities. Potentialities, by their very nature, have reality only in awareness. What we call God is 'gnosis' --- a knowing awareness of potentiality that is the source of knowable actualities.” — Gnomon

This "primordial field of potentiality" seems to be what you suggest - in effect, a condition (I am avoiding saying a "time" on purpose) in which the universe existed as pure potentiality (i.e. no actualities)...another way of saying it would be "a primordial field of (as yet) un-real-ized potentiality" - yes? And it is this that I am suggesting is not - could not be - connected to 'reality' - because in that condition, there would be no reality for it to be connected to unless - as you and Wilberg both seem to want to do - we redefine 'reality' to include things that are patently not real.

BTW - I believe Wilberg was using 'gnosis' to describe "God's knowledge" of potentiality, not human knowledge of God...but that seems to be just a clever maneuver to dodge the problem of God being aware of phenomena that have not yet phenomenalized...un-real-ized realities? And that seems to me to be a case of willful obfuscation. It seems perfectly clear to me that, for example, the "redness" qualia can only exist if there are (apparently) red things for it to describe - employing terminological ambiguity to muddy the waters really doesn't help the argument. To establish a compelling argument in favour of the primacy of ideality over reality, mentality over physicality - mind before matter - one really only has to make a compelling case for the existence of (for example) the redness qualia in a universe that has no red things in it. What possible information (let alone meaning) could the idea of redness convey - by gnosis or perception - in a world with no red things in it? What possible difference could 'redness' make to anything in a world with no red things in it? And if it really makes no real difference at all to any real thing at all...does it really exist at all?

It seems to me to be much more straightforward to make an argument against the real existence of qualia than for...if you doubt this, perhaps you can point to a quale that really exists but that describes some property that has existed in the universe...perhaps a colour or a shape that nothing has ever been...

But your thesis and Wilberg's argument both require that such qualia, such colours, necessarily exist - just waiting for the opportunity to be actualized...they are (presumably) un-real-ized potentialities...

That is the "unconnected to reality" bit that I am finding difficulty swallowing.

The shift is from Reductionism to Holism, and from Mechanism to Organism. — Gnomon

Agreed. But shifting from reductionism to holism and mechanism to organism doesn't mean we have to abandon physicalism...it just means we have to take proper account of the effects of big things (like people and planets) as 'organisms' rather than imagining that we can deduce everything by imagining them as simple conglomerations of individual particles. Its not really fundamentally doing anything more than we do when we ascribe a property (say liquidity) to a body of water despite the fact that we know full well that no such property exists in the individual water molecules. That is - we just have to acknowledge that very often, the whole is more than the simple sum of its parts.

Ecologists have always known this of course...biologists have suspected it for even longer...meteorologists discovered it in the 1960s...chemists hated it and hoped it wasn't true - that is until they decided to use some of the evidence for attractive science fair and open day displays to attract prospective students, and physicists have wondered whether this might be why most of their experiments don't work, but ultimately they split into two camps - a few who still believe that its just a matter of time (and increasing precision of measurement) before we can predict absolutely everything from a relatively simple set of mathematical rules and sufficiently accurate knowledge of the original conditions, and those who think God might be the ultimate Mathematical Wizard par excellence.

For me - I reckon its just that - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts...

You are correct that my ideas are along the lines of Whitehead's "philsophy of organism"

There is no absolute dichotomy and magical transformation of matter into mind via some unknown causal line, as is the common concept today. Rather, the elements of the world are already sentient, so that such subject-object fusion is not merely the alteration of the organism, but the fusion of panexperiential reality with oneself.

That's what I'm driving at - it is (all) an organic, ecological, holistic process - there are no unconnected realities - there is no mind/body dualism - mind and body are simply - or rather very organically, holistically and complicatedly but nevertheless quite naturally - two aspects of the one reality.

I would agree except for your insistence on the primacy of the material world. — Gnomon

I think you are missing the point again - I don't insist on the "primacy of the material world" - the world is always (no matter how simple or complex it is) both mental and physical...these are not two substances, but rather two aspects of one...a physical pole and a mental pole - totally inseparable one from the other. There are no disembodied thoughts and there is no 'mindless matter' - matter is always minded and thoughts are always embodied - i.e. they exist as functions or properties of 'bodies' - reductionism doesn't really work at this level because the 'body' might be as small as a quark or as big as a cosmos (and all stops in between) - they all carry their mentality along with their materiality - there is no primacy of mind or matter - both spring into 'existence' (whatever that is) simultaneously at the birth of the physical reality of the 'thing' (whatever it is) and then dissipate together at the 'things' demise. The electron's 'idea' of 'electron-ness' (i.e. the defining properties that make an electron an electron and not another thing) is exactly coincidental and coeval with the electron's physical reality. The universe does not have to imagine an electron BEFORE it produces one...it just happens - the idea and the reality just pop into existence together at the same time.

I was surprised that many posters on a philosophy forum are still confused about the "hard problem" : the Subjective aspect of an Objective world. — Gnomon

The "hard problem" vanishes with the bipolar panexperiential physicalism that I have suggested - matter minds and minds matter - there is no impenetrable barrier that prevents minds from affecting matter causally - it is precisely what the process of physical reality does - quite routinely. In a sense, there is no objective world, its all subjective because it is all unavoidably relational and what one particle 'senses' in proximity to another affects the reality of the 'sensed' particle - the observer effect runs very deep - there are no 'isolated' particles that can be observed objectively - at best we have an overwhelming consensus of subjective observations. There is no such ding as a ding an sich because there are no dings that exist an sich - in fact they're all, without exception, part of a neverending (or was it neverbeginning) process of continual change. And with that ding an sich bathwater, out goes the baby of the noumena/phenomena dichotomy - the noumenon of a particular particle is the idea of that particular particle in the particular circumstances it finds itself in...there is probably not another one exactly like it, but there are certainly sufficient regularities for an 'intelligent' observer to 'know' an electron when he 'sees' one - they all look the same to me!

If "non-local" is meaningful to you, we can use that word. — Gnomon

Non-local is fine, but what you just suggested...

we are assuming, like Plato that there is a non-local, non-temporal realm, such as we find in Quantum Theory. — Gnomon

...is not helping at all I'm afraid. Non-local does not either imply or entail non-temporal and that is not what we "find" in Quantum Theory - non-temporality might be predicted (although I would suggest it is more accurate to suggest that temporality is not predicted) - but non-temporality has never been observed. They might think they have transcended the limits of physical possibility by faster than light "transmission" (not the right word I know but my brain is turning to jelly) of information, but they have never demonstrated any effect that preceded its cause. The arrow of time has never been reversed even if the clock can be shown to tick faster or slower according to the relative inertial reference frames of object and observer. And the works of Shakespeare did not exist before he began to write them. Ideas are not non-temporal even of they are not spatio-temporal. They're not necessarily entirely non-local either, although we may not be able to pinpoint the exact locus of a process of neural events giving rise to a particular 'thought' or 'feeling', I think we can be pretty sure that it was something that happened in our head and not very much to do with anything happening in the Andromeda Galaxy.

So yes, non-local is meaningful to me - but it probably doesn't mean the same to me as it does to you.

They know what energy does, but they only know what it is mathematically by imagining an invisible point in space relative to another point : it's a ratio or relationship (information), not a piece of matter. — Gnomon

Now who's missing the point? Just because it itself is not a piece of matter doesn't mean it is does not belong to the material world. In any case, what would be the potential energy of a point? Your argument loses weight when you reduce it to points - and the point, in the case of gravitational potential energy (for example), would be a center of gravity - an imaginary point alright, but that doesn't mean that the material reality of the body in question is in question - or that it really has that potential energy. Mind you, it might very well turn out that ultimately potential energy is really a misnomer and that its all really kinetic energy - we just don't properly understand all the motions that it derives from at a sufficiently fundamental level to elucidate that properly yet...but that is quite another story. The point for the current discussion is that the 'potential' bit of 'potential energy' in physics does not mean energy that potentially exists, it means energy that really exists and has the real potential to be converted into kinetic (or other kinds of) energy. It belongs entirely to the material world.

we can laugh at those in Bible times who believed that diseases were caused by demons. Yet modern doctors expect us to believe that we are besieged by invisible bacteria and viruses. The difference is that medical doctors are slightly better than witch-doctors at curing the sick. And placebos work better than most drugs, even though the active ingredient is faith. The power of the mind (metaphysics), is far above the power of the body (physics). — Gnomon

Oh c'mon Gnomon! You almost had me believing that you had a solid argument - not one that I happen to agree with you understand, but a solid one nvevertheless...that was until I read this half paragraph that I just quoted...seriously? Are you suggesting that bacteria and viruses are not material realities? And "placebos work better than most drugs"? Where's your evidence for that?

Chaos before Cosmos*2. Does that make sense? — Gnomon

Not one bit I'm afraid...

...and you seem to be deliberately misapplying terms like "Potential Energy" - which is, of course, actual - it is a property of actual objects in the physical world - like a boulder at the top of the cliff just before the Roadrunner tips it over and prompts all that potential (work-within) energy to manifest as motion (kinetic) as gravity draws it inevitably downwards towards a hapless and unsuspecting Wile E Coyote below. That energy did not miraculously "cross over" some boundary between ideal unreality and physical actuality as your comments seem to suggest - it was there all the time as a function of the physical mass and the physical location of the boulder - none of it happens or exists outside of space-time...

And then you put the icing on your obfuscatory cake by redefining chaos as some kind of infinite "state" of unlimited potentiality - that is not what either the ancient Greek mythological, or the modern scientific conceptions of chaos meant at all. As applied to the primordial condition of whatever preceded the existence of the apparently ordered cosmos, chaos simply meant "formlessness", "emptiness" or "nothingness". In the modern scientific context chaos describes the inherent unpredictability of complex physical systems. One requires a supernatural agent to intervene to bring order, the other suggests that no agent could possibly predict the future evolution of a reality of such complexity as the universe with precision on account of the inherent unpredictability of the system itself.

The Laws of Nature are not written on slabs of stone, but inscribed in the code of the Big Bang. — Gnomon

They are written on slabs of stone - or rather IN slabs of stone...and in living cells and molecules and stars and clouds and trees and...well you get the picture...just as the 'en' of 'en-ergy' signifies a capacity for work that resides within a physical system, so the laws of nature reside within nature. If not, then what possible (difference-making) meaning could those laws have in the absence of nature? In your proposed primordial ideality of unlimited potentiality, what possible meaning could those "laws" have had? What possible difference could they have made to anything? And, as I have argued before, if it makes no difference at all to anything at all, it quite probably doesn't exist at all.

Well, maybe not forever. Cosmologists now predict that the war between Chaos and Order (Entropy & Energy) will eventually self-destruct, by neutralizing each other in a "Big Sigh" of Entropy. The temperature at that point will be absolute Zero. No more Change. — Gnomon

But that would be the end of time - no time, no change, no anything...that can be the end, but it could not possibly be the beginning...how could change possibly arise from changelessness? So the universe will have, must have, been somewhere between chaos and order for the entirety of time - forever.

Space & Time are meaningless without Matter & Energy. — Gnomon

Egg zackly! And vice versa. What is the use of en-ergy if there is no time or space in which to erg en? That's the problem I came up against as I attempted to formulate my own worldview. Space and time are surely not, it seemed to me, just sitting around waiting to be filled with matter and energy...but just as surely, matter and energy cannot exist without time and space. So the physical world (at least) must have always had both matter/energy and space/time and it will always have to have both - forever and ever, world without end - amen! That is the essence (isn't it?) of the physicalist worldview.

Do you think Negentropy existed prior to the Big Boom? — Gnomon

Well that's the sixty-four thousand dollar question isn't it? If we extrapolate back, the 2nd law of thermodynamics states that we should see evidence of greater order (lower entropy) the further back we go..."the singularity" that some people imagine was the origin of the universe must have been perfectly ordered - which is just another way of saying there was only one possible state it could have been in and still been "the singularity"...a perfectly ordered universe consisting of just one thing in only one of precisely one possible states - you can't get more negentropic than that. But then whence the increasing disorder...and whence the little pockets of relative order - like the Gnomons and the Sitis - little biological oases of relative orderliness swimming for a spell against the tide of an otherwise decadently chaotic world before being swept away by the waves of overwhelming entropic reality...

...and yet, we also imagine the order of the apparently anthropophilic universe having emerged from primordial chaos to create a world favourable to a particular species of relatively large-brained ape in a far flung corner of an otherwise unremarkable galaxy at the biological and philosophical center of the exquisitely ordered cosmos.

Clearly these two cannot both be right - my guess is that they are both dead wrong. My guess is that there never was a perfectly ordered singularity, and neither was there ever a completely chaotic lack of order. My guess is that this is why the universe was able to get from there (wherever that was) to here (wherever that is) without passing through eternity. My guess is that the universe will be somewhere between chaos and order - always and forever. My guess is that 'something' rather than 'nothing' banged. My guess is that that 'something' was neither perfectly ordered nor absolutely chaotic, but somewhere in between...so yes - I suppose I do think negentropy existed prior to the BB - and so did entropy - but as to whether these could be characterized by anything resembling the 2nd law that characterizes them in 'this" (post Big Bang) 'universe' - I have no idea...and apart from a few metaphysical speculators - some of whom also happen to be rather smart physicists - neither does anyone else.

EFA is equivalent to Elan Vital — Gnomon

But wasn't elan vital abandoned by biologists when it became clear that evolution (aka change) was the driving force of biological variation? The potential for novelty is within the current reality - not without

...and 'experientiality' - i.e. the essential relatedness of everything to everything else (rather than some mysterious and supernatural 'organizing principle') - is what guides - or rather limits - the extent of genuine novelty that can emerge.

Any questions? — Gnomon

Only one: is 'experientiality' a real word?

Why then, did cosmologists feel the need to invoke a "supernatural agency" to explain the logically "prior" cause of the Big Bang? — Gnomon

I suppose for the same reason that ancient cartographers used to write "here be dragons" at the edges of their maps.

As long as it's just a hypothesis, serving to guide our search for understanding, there's no harm in imagining an unseen world beyond the veil of our local space-time. — Gnomon

There's no harm, but how does it help? Equating "unseen" with "unrealized" is more or less the definition of the kind of idealism that I believe is counter-productive in terms of constructing a worldview consistent with genuine scientific knowledge...that seems to be the danger that the article you quoted from is referring to (https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/49/2/2.33/246813) - the danger, as you correctly pointed out, of dogmatism...

...but as the article pointed out, it is even more pernicious in that these kind of ideas (multiverse) substitute explanatory power for scientific testability. I would go even further than the author and suggest that this substitution moves physics progressively further and further into the realms of speculative metaphysics where only explanatory power (and not actual observation or measurement) determines the appropriateness of the model to the question at hand. To me, that's a retrograde step...hypotheses are fine, but scientific hypotheses must offer at least a potential means of actually being tested by observation - multiverse(s) are, by definition, untestable hypotheses and therefore unscientific.

I prefer to base my own metaphysical speculations on tested science rather than someone else's untested speculative metaphysics...better the devil you know!

I can see with my own eyes that everything changes - all the time...so 'evolution' - in the broadest sense - is the bedrock of my speculations...

And I sense that sensing (experiencing - in the most rudimentary sense - i.e. 'responses' to 'physical stimuli') seems to be at the root of how bits of the world relate to one another - avoid bumping into one another...etc.

So I've got time, change and experience as fundamentals...that seems to me to be how the world works and tracking deeper into space and time I see no compelling reason to abandon these at any arbitrary point...so I end up with a panexperiential, evolutionary (now this, now that) relational process of physical reality...all the way down.

...much more complex and hybridized. — Enrique

Well - I wrote a long response to your earlier post only to find that my internet connection had mysteriously disentangled itself - my attempt to fix that crashed my browser and I had no choice but to reboot and I lost the whole lot...anyways, this phrase of yours pretty well sums up what I think about the recent exchanges between you and my old friend @Gnomon - reality is just much more complex and hybridized than our scientific models can cope with. We really cannot predict the ten commandments (for example) from the standard model of particle physics - no matter how much information we might have about the original "state" of the universe - because the ten commandments are (an encoding of) an exceedingly complex and hybridized "pattern" of (acceptable) moral behaviour that has emerged (quite naturally but entirely unpredictably) from the evolution of the human species and its collective, holistic "culture". It is all about how "we" relate - to one another, to our group and to reality as "a whole". This is an example of chaos - the butterfly effect and all that - no laws of physics were broken or suspended and yet out of (and wholly within) 'nature' an entirely unpredictable reality emerged. There is - in my opinion - no need to invoke some kind of supernatural agency, this stuff happens all the time - conglomerations of water molecules that appear - on the fundamental face of things - to be almost identical to one another, fuse together into featureless drops that fall from the sky and perturb the even bigger conglomerations of water molecules causing ripples that continue to spread across the breadth of an ocean long after the culprit molecules have slipped anonymously into the crowd where they betray absolutely no evidence of having made any difference to anything at all - and yet there are the ripples - undeniable realities which could not have been predicted no matter how detailed and precise any measurements of any particular water molecule(s) could have been.

"Pay no attention to that water molecule behind the curtain..."

"You're a very bad water molecule"

"No my dear - I'm a very good water molecule, I'm just a very bad ripple-maker"

Beyond the veil of observable physical reality, is there really a qualitatively different realm of disembodied "wizardry" that gives rise to the illusion of materiality? Or is it rather pretty much more of the same - another side of the same coin - just more difficult to see - and 'grasp'? Is the "idea" of an electron (for example) something that resides beyond the physical reality of the electron - or does the electron carry it around with it wherever it goes? Physicality and mentality inextricably entwined.

Again, to use "experience" for spatio-temporal relationships seems to be referring to an unqualified [no qualia] event, with numerical instead of meaningful values. But the term "experience" can denote simply "an inscrutable cause-effect event", or it can refer to the "conscious knowledge of that event".

The mechanical (cause-effect) occurrence is what Materialism considers fundamental, while most humans feel that the significance (cause-effect-meaning) of the event is more essential... — Gnomon

Well I did say there considerable gaps to be filled in - qualia clearly arise at somewhat higher levels of complexity - but fundamentally, are they not still relational aspects of our experience of the world? Is that flower "red" because a human mind has unilaterally determined that it is red? Or is it "red" because that is how we relate (and have related) to other apparently "red" things? The 'meaning' arises at least partly from the essential nature of the thing observed (i.e. the kind of atoms and molecules it is made of and the frequencies of radiation they absorb) and partly from the conventional (relational) categorizations we have learned in the relational process of life. Its "red-ness" is neither uniquely our own idea nor a disembodied one that attaches to the object on observation. It is a process-relational aspect of the intersection of the mental and physical poles of the realities of the flower and the observer. The flower (presumably) has no conception of its own 'redness' but its material reality, in part at least, confers redness upon it (in the eye of the beholder) by virtue of its (internal and external) spatio-temporal (chemical and electromagnetic) relationships to the world. And the observer 'conceives' of its redness, in part at least, by virtue of the spatio-temporal relationships within and between the sensory apparatus and the material reality being observed.

Traditionally, that conscious experience was the purview of Spiritualism, and is associated with ghosts. Which is why I prefer to call it Enformationism, which is explanatory for the natural world, but remains neutral toward supernatural explanations, with one exception : EnFormAction is causation, and must either have an eternal First Cause, or an infinite mechanism of causation. — Gnomon

Right - there are only two options - eternal First Cause or infinite regress. Infinite regress is hard to get the head around, but an eternal first cause that is (at least before the start of 'causation') timeless and changeless. I find that notion utterly absurd - how can something changeless be a reasonable explanation for the most momentous change imaginable? So I'm left with infinite regress - time and change, cause and effect - unbeginning and unending - or at least if it ever did end (and become timeless and changeless) what could possibly set it going again? But it could not have begun - a beginning to change is impossible.

Since we don't normally associate consciousness with cog & wheel mechanisms, a Mind of some kind seems to be a better metaphor. I think of it as a more humanistic worldview. — Gnomon

Are you sure its humanistic - or unjustifiably anthropocentric?

I also avoid the term "experience" for the same reason : it implies that atoms have a personal perspective. — Gnomon

I just want to clarify why I DO choose to use the experience despite the obvious disadvantage you have correctly pointed out. For me, experience is just about the most fundamental undeniable fact of our existence - by experience I mean the fact (not the content) of experience - that we experience the world is undeniable - even if we and the world are figments of some deity's diseased imagination and purely illusory, we are still experiencing the illusion...the fact of experience cannot be denied - experientia ergo sum (perhaps).

Anyway, the question then arises as to whether this (fact of) experience - the capacity to experience (relate to) the rest of the world - is fundamental to the underlying reality that seems to underpin our existence or some kind of radical emergence or addition that arises (somehow - magically, mysteriously, supernaturally???) only at certain levels of complexity. I don't like the second option (although I freely admit I can never prove that it isn't so), so I go with the idea that experience (the capacity to relate to the rest of the world in some way) is fundamental...and that idea has far-reaching consequences...

First, it does indeed mean that, in a sense, atoms do have a 'personal' (not really personal but individual) perspective - they (each) exist in time as well as space and what just happened is part of their reality now - i.e. they have some kind of 'memory' that is not simply a geometric spatial relationship at a 'point' in time, but a temporal process that carries its own individual information along with its material reality.

This is absolutely key because it temporalizes all of reality at the most fundamental level and it has to if experience is to be fundamental because experiences cannot happen in no time (i.e. at points in time). Atoms do not exist at points in time, they, like everything else, exist during intervals of time (no matter how small) and that does indeed mean that there is "something that it is like" to be an atom (more precisely, to be this or that atom) just as Thomas Nagel famously argued that there was "something that it is like" to be a bat...no matter how different and inaccessible to us it might be, that "something-that-it-is-like"-ness, is, in a very real sense, WHAT the atom IS.

Right - OK - I've gone a long way off topic (it seems)...here's the upshot (leaving some considerable gaps to filled in by the unwary reader's own imagination)...

The essential nature of atoms, consists of the spatial, geometric regularities that distinguish atoms from other stuff - like electrons and elephants...

The individual nature of THIS or THAT atom consists of the spatio-temporal relationships that this or that atom 'experiences' (and has 'experienced') with the other stuff around it.

Ditto human beings - our essential nature is unmistakably human (regularities that distinguish us from electrons and elephants etc.), our individual nature is a function of how we relate to and experience (and have experienced) the world.

And the mind-body interaction problem disappears - minding is just what bodies do - and its "just one of those things you put down to experience! Ooh wah wah, ooh wah wah, ooh!"

Actually, the notions of G*D and Multiverse are both infinitely redundant. But if you accept the physicists' Multiverse theory, you still have no explanation for the Metaphysical Ontological problem : how did Mind arise from Matter? What is it about Matter that causes Ideas, Imagination, and Love? — Gnomon

Well if I knew that, I wouldn't be wasting my time in The Philosophy Forum, I'd be on my way to Stockholm to collect my Nobel Prize...but I prefer to think of mind (or better mind-ing) as what matter does - at least when its not just bouncing around like zillions of un-aimed billiard balls - which is not what matter does anyway - at least not when it is clumped together into something as complex as - well - a mindless molecule...let alone a hairless ape. As to exactly how it works - I have no idea at all (which kind of takes us back to where we started). Actually, I do have an idea - I think "mind" is essentially the relational part of the "process-relational" way the universe seems (to me) to work...you have stuff - and it "minds"...i.e. it relates to other bits of stuff - and the stuff, and its "mind(-ing)" vary in complexity from the relatively simple and isolated (like molecules of gas in interstellar space) to the incredibly complex and interconnected (like the immense colony of living cells that form a human being). That "relating" I prefer to call "experience" and the fact that it goes down to the deepest, most fundamental levels of physical reality - e.g. when three quarks encounter each other they 'know' exactly what to do - form a proton - how so if they are truly "mindless" - i.e. how does a world characterized at the fundamental level by random mindlessness produce order? The answer (according to my imagination) is that each bit of stuff 'experiences' (relates to) the world in ways that correspond to the way that very similar bits of stuff 'experience' the world. These regularities of 'experience' (relating) become the 'order' of the universe (which we characterize as "laws of nature" or "laws of physics"). When you get increasingly complex networks of bits of stuff - like human beings - then you get lots of regularities, and lots of unique combos of "experiential realities" (relatings) which make each one of us unmistakably and essentially human and yet as distinguishable from one another as chalk and cheese. Very few of us would be able to distinguish one bacterium from another - even to identify at species level requires special training and expertise. Its a complexity thing - and if one thinks of "mind" as an aspect of reality that is present at the most fundamental levels, it is much easier to imagine how it gets to be so complex at higher levels of reality. I prefer to call this idea by David Griffin's term "pan-experientialism" - some call it "pan-psychism" but I don't like that term because its too easily associated with new-age nonsense and it kind of implies that things like electrons have a "psyche" or are somehow "conscious" - I don't think that, but I am pretty sure they do relate to and experience (at a very rudimentary and fundamental level) the world around them - and that, in a much more complicated way, is what the human "mind" does - relates to and experiences the world - is it not?

Are you talking about Clock Time or Block Time? The latter is Everything Forever. Can you wrap your mind around that? — Gnomon

I think so - Block Time is a result of treating time as a fourth dimension - effectively, a sequence of geometric points in time in which everything that will ever "happen" has in fact already "happened", and the events that are yet future, well, we just haven't reached "there" yet. A bit too Calvinistic for my liking - I prefer to think that what we do actually makes a difference - however small. I have no idea how time might have worked "before" the Big Bang, but I'm pretty convinced that cause still preceded effect. If not, then there is no hope of us making any sense of anything prior to or beyond the universe as we (barely) know it.

If you can entertain the notion of an infinite regression of Multiverses, it shouldn't be too hard to imagine that everything possible has been tried, at least in principle. So that is a deep pool of "statistical significance" to draw upon. But to make it more plausible for my thesis, I assume that a combination of the mental trait of Information (to know) and the physical power of Energy (to enform) is even more likely to predict the outcome of a chain of changes, than zillions of mindless atoms bouncing around like un-aimed billiard balls. — Gnomon

If you can entertain the notion of an infinite regression of multiverses, zillions of mindless atoms bouncing around like un-aimed billiard balls will inevitably give rise to intelligent life - infinitely many times...and that's kind of my point - if you are invoking infinity, eternity or unlimited potentiality (or whatever) - there is absolutely no need for an intelligent creator - if you are invoking an intelligent creator, there is no need for infinity, eternity or unlimited potentiality (or whatever). To have both is introduce infinite redundancy.

How do you know that no cause & effect events happen outside of space-time? Is that an unfounded assumption, or is it based on evidence? Don't you assume that the Big Bang was caused by some event prior to the emergence of space-time? — Gnomon

No I don't - personally, I think it is the height of absurdity to suggest that the most significant event could possibly have happened "outside of time" - no time, no change, no change, no ... anything ... tick, tock, tick tock - nothing happens in no time - how could it?

did I say anything about “no idea at all”? — Gnomon

No you didn't, I did. I suggested that the "primordial" IDEA - i.e. the starting point of the "process of creation" - if it were truly unlimited (as in an unlimited 'pool of potentiality') - would be exactly equivalent to "no idea at all".

In the Intelligent Evolution theory, I postulate that the Programmer had no entention of creating dumb creatures like Adam & Eve, but merely had the “idea” of creating semi-autonomous intelligent creatures --- little avatars for entertainment. So, S/he simply designed a process that would “stumble” upon an optimum solution --- within the constraints of space & time, and natural laws --- by learning from its own mistakes. The design criteria & parameters are assumed to be working via Natural Selection. So the final goal was specified only in terms of a problem description. And the zig-zag path to that goal was what Hegel called “The Dialectic Process”, as contrasted with the “Didactic Process” of Intelligent Design. The Process is the Product. Playing the game is the point, not the final score. "The play's the thing". — Gnomon

But this is what I don't get - how could it have been known that it was even possible to "stumble upon" any solution - let alone an optimum one - how could it have been known that semi-autonomous intelligent avatars were even a possibility? As soon as the question is asked, the possibilities are limited - and if God already knew that such an outcome was possible, he presumably had no need to experiment. How could God entertain himself by thinking thoughts he had already thought - because in your scheme, I can't see how there can possibly be any thoughts that are not God's thoughts? If the point of "the play" is that the outcome cannot be known in advance, then God did not know - indeed God would seem to be profoundly ignorant - completely unaware that the process could possibly have progressed beyond the level of bacteria - or even beyond inanimate matter for that matter. And if he did know that, then at least a significant part of the story was pre-written before the "heuristic" playwright set pen to paper - wasn't it?

I don't want to go any further about aboutness - I take your point about the subjective angle aboutness is about.

You assume that all “events” occur in space & time — Gnomon

They don't?

if intent & goal (cause & effect) occupy the same space & time, what's the point? — Gnomon

Well of course they don't exist simultaneously - but the intent is part of reality now - for example, I want to build a new utility room and workshop extension on our farm house...that goal is part of my reality right now - even though it may never be completed as a physical reality. But once it is built, there will be an unbroken process of space-time events connecting the initial idea to the realized goal. None of it happens outside of space and time. Is there any compelling reason to assume that any other cause-effect processes are any different?

Don't overthink it. The intended goal may be general, but the final outcome will be specific. — Gnomon

I understand that...but even a 'wise fool' (according to the well known Irish joke) knows that if you want to get to Dublin you shouldn't start from here...! If the 'world' began in primordial chaos, how did it know there even was to be an outcome, a destination, a path (no matter how diffuse and indistinct) to be followed - let alone anything about its "general" parameters? Learning processes often do lead to unexpected destinations, but they usually start with at the very least a question - even if it is an open-ended one. They don't usually start from "no idea at all" as far as I can tell...although they might, like threads on philosophy forums, end up there!

That example misses the point of "aboutness". — Gnomon

OK - but we're getting confusing definitions now - I was going on from Terrence Deacon's usage...which not about perceptions...in any case - even if 'elephant-aboutness' is in the eye of the beholder, the question still pertains - what is an elephant with no 'elephant-aboutness'?

Entention (aim, purpose, motivation) must come before Completion (conclusion, resolution, realization). If intent and goal coexist, then there's no need to move toward the target. — Gnomon

I don't believe I said anything about intent and goal coexisting, what I said was that 'ententionality' (aims, purposes, motivations, functionalities, directionalities...) must emerge with the emerging reality - their 'goals' may be future and may remain unrealized, but the 'ententionalities' are (I am suggesting) the 'mental poles' of the emerging realities - inseparable from and necessarily coexistent with the 'physical pole' substrates on which they (ententionalities) 'supervene' (perhaps) driving the evolution of the reality forward...but with no particular destination in mind - at least most of the time.

Insight, to me is that flash of understanding we have. Not logic, not analysis, but the almost instant function of recognition of the mind. — Mikey

So would that not be "intuition" rather than "insight"? And forgive me my lack of faith, but I can't help being very wary of philosophical ideas based on intuition and pattern recognition. Logic never gets it wrong - it can be inconclusive or misapplied, but logic itself is incapable of error - not so intuition.

I was wondering if insight was considered a valid way to advance philosophy — Mikey

I'm a little bit confused by the OP linking "insight" (whatever that is) with "pattern recognition", which is sometimes, it seems to me, the opposite of "insightfulness". For example:



One person sees a face, another sees a natural rock formation. Which observer has "insight" and which is recognizing patterns? So where would the line be between apophenia and insightful pattern recognition? And with such an obvious (and, it seems, necessarily subjective) limitation, how could philosophy be (reliably) advanced on the basis of "insight"? But that is not to say that someone might not have a "philosophical insight" by recognizing a "pattern" among the collection of available facts that had not been recognized before. That's more or less how science "advances". In the end though, I guess any such insight would have to be shown to conform to logic before it could be established as a "philosophical advance". Wouldn't it?

Bula Gnomon!

I am struggling to see how you can have both of these:

...the final outcome is unknown. — Gnomon

and...

...the current form of human nature is ... a step in the direction of the intended goal ("original idea"). — Gnomon

If the first is correct then the "original idea" and "intended goal" must presumably have been "no idea" - which, it seems to me, is probably exactly right...

Anyway, let me go back a step or two and see if I can grasp at least one of the terms. I take it from the definition you linked to, you intend "entention" in the sense of Terrence Deacon's coinage (?) where, if I read him correctly, "ententions" or maybe "ententionalities", are equivalent to what might be called "aboutnesses" - i.e. they are phenomena (such as 'intentionality', 'purpose', 'function'...etc.) that are (obviously) not themselves physical realities but nevertheless really exist because they are "about" some reality or another?

So if that's a fair reading of "entention", then I can live with that...and it can go from bottom to top of the entire process of reality. Electrons, elephants and ecosystems all have a "physical being-ness" and "mental about-ness" (some kind of functionality at the very least). These, I think, are equivalent (in a broad sense) to the "physical and mental poles" of Whitehead's "occasions of experience" (except that "objects" such as electrons and elephants etc. are themselves abstractions that don't truly exist - now that for sure is counter-intuitive but please bear with me - the true reality of an elephant is a process of continual change composed of uncountably many "occasions of experience" (of "elephant-ness"?) which the are the true actualities in Whitehead's scheme).

So "entention", as far as I can make out, is essentially equivalent to the "mentality" of a real thing that goes together with its "physicality". But I don't see how these could ever be separated from one another...an "elephant" with no "elephant-about-ness" (no elephant functionality, no elephant intentionality...etc.) is just not an "elephant"...

Entention, it seems to me must, of necessity, emerge together with the emerging reality - hand in glove - inseparably intertwined, or what? Do we have ideas floating around waiting for the opportunity to attach to some emerging reality that they somehow happen to correspond to?

As usual, I find myself wanting to take the exact opposite view to what seems to be the "norm" (another "entention" at a more holsitic/communal level?) - I want to say that what we normally conceive of as abstractions (ideas "drawn out" of reality) are really "entractions" ("pulled in" to reality from a genuinely infinite array of non-existing unrealities that are, apart (i.e. separated from) from the reality that entracted them, entirely devoid of meaning or efficacy, whilst "ententions" are really "abtentions" - that is, "mental" "aboutnesses" drawn out of the process of emerging realities.

And looking at it that way, I cannot imagine the primordial "IDEA" having been anything other than "no idea at all" - or rather - "every possible idea no matter how ridiculously improbable" - which is exactly equivalent to "no idea at all" because it tells you precisely nothing about what might actually eventuate. But I'm guessing even evolutionary programmers don't start off with "no idea at all" - or if they do, I think I might just have discovered my perfect career choice!

But even the otherwise unlikely emergence of Life & Mind can be understood as inevitable if evolution is an intentional program of En-formation via Cause & Effect dating back to a Rational First Cause. In that sense, I can agree that human reason is an endowment that matured only after billions of years from the initial investment (evolution). — Gnomon

If its an "intentional program" then "essentialism" is the only option, nothing is really genuinely the result of constructive (creative) evolution but rather an inevitable and pre-programmed consequence of the original "idea"... and given that the emergence of human-kind was, at some point, the result of a single sexual liaison, doesn't that imply that ALL sexual liaisons are predetermined and therefore part of the "essence" of each of the individuals involved? Then on what basis is ANY behaviour to be ruled "immoral" - the caprice of the divine Mind that thought it up in the first place?

Interestingly, Buddhists are generally very kind and humane to animals, but being reborn into the animal realm, which is said to be extremely common, is an enormous misfortune, because animals are stupid and so can't understand the Buddhist teaching leading to liberation. — Wayfarer

Don't know about that - it would presumably be an even greater misfortune for a Buddhist to be reborn as a fundamentalist Christian - who (from a Buddhist point of view) only imagine they know the way to liberation! But I guess that's a far less common regression.

science itself can provide no foundation for values. — Wayfarer

I also have to disagree with your objection (after Weaver and co.) to the elevation of "fact" above "value" and your contention that science provides no foundation for values. I believe science enables us to "en-fact-uate" (I think I just made that word up) our values...e.g. is the individual "right" to own personal property to be valued more highly than the collective "need" to conserve biodiversity? Absent scientific "facts" we wouldn't even know there was a "biodiversity" to be conserved, let alone how important it might (or might not) be to future generations of humans. Point is, some "value judgements" simply cannot be made by pure reason in the absence of scientific facts and have - it seems - not been handed down as transcendent moral strictures.

just for funsies — Gnomon

To get my example back on topic, is it part of an "essential" human nature to exploit natural resources without regard to the consequences - or is our propensity for destroying our own habitat a just-for-fun 'spandrel' in the works of cultural evolution?

unchangeable facts about human nature — BitconnectCarlos

Such as?

Because I believe that there are certain facts about human nature and if a system ignores or directly contradicts these facts it is bound to fail. — BitconnectCarlos

But surely one of the most obvious facts about human nature is that humans have the propensity for devising moral and political systems that fail because of the enormous variability of human nature?

It's that they start with the statement of fact (something like "human nature is X, Y, Z") and from there they're able to evaluate political or moral systems. If one of these systems flies in the face of human nature it is dismissed. — BitconnectCarlos

How can anything that humans have devised "fly in the face of human nature"?

The necessity of keeping science empirical. — StreetlightX

Science is necessarily empirical and based on the assumption that B follows A (whatever A and B cause/effect pair we are considering) via a perfectly natural process. Absent either the empiricism or the assumption of naturalism (for practical purposes), it simply isn't science.

I'm somewhat bemused that we had to detour through a bunch of unrelated dosh to get there. — StreetlightX

Its just the way the conversation naturally evolved.

Fallibism is not a question of doubt. — StreetlightX

Are you sure?

Ugh, "...via an evolutionary process" obviously, I'd have thought that obvious enough. — StreetlightX

Obviously! So is there any reason - now that we have happily discarded the argument for irreducible complexity - to doubt that it is equally obvious that A has indeed led to B "...via an evolutionary process"? I can't think of one.

What the "bo" will tell you is that, for the practical purposes of reproduction, the gender rainbow is reduced down to three colors : 1. male, 2. female, 3. other. Apparently, they have no religious or political scruples about "other", which is not practical, but just for funsies. Perhaps the fun aspect is not an evolutionary adaptation, but just a "spandrel". — Gnomon

Perhaps - but they do seem to spend a bit less time trying to kill each other than either of their two closest evolutionary cousins - so perhaps a few minutes of indiscriminate "rainbow promiscuity" now and again does more to ease social tensions between the "essential" categories (groups) of individuals among a species than several decades of "constructive" detente? And maybe the propensity for "out-of-kind" (atypical, anormal) promiscuous behaviour is more than just a "spandrel" in evolutionary terms? Maybe its an "essential" evolutionary part of what makes the entire spectrum of "multi-coloured" humans, nevertheless all human? Perhaps?

I think it's quite possible to decouple, or isolate, as it were, the negative thesis - you can't get from A to B - from the positive one - that each part must have a functional role. I'm perfectly happy to discard the argument for IC - which is irrelavent for a null hypothesis in any case - and simply hew to the conclusion it wants to derive. — StreetlightX

But then you are left with a null hypothesis (which is not really a null hypothesis anyway) that simply states that "you can't get from A to B" when the process has clearly (somehow) done exactly that! Obviously something is wrong there!

The only proper null hypothesis is randomness and as yet, we have no compelling reason to reject it.

I do intend to stay out of gender politics — Gnomon

Chicken!

But this is just crude adaptationism; the sting in the tail of IC is the second part, in which evolution could not have given rise to something because there was no available evolutionary pathway. But that's just the null hypothesis: that there is no way to get from A to B. That's what's 'irreducible'. — StreetlightX

But that second definition too is based on teleological assumptions - the argument is that evolution could not 'select' in favour of a pathway leading to or including "parts" with no advantageous functionality - but that's a just a complete misconception of how natural selection works (I thought I had already explained that somewhere). In any case, nature does not select "in favour" of this or that trait generally, but largely against disadvantageous traits - i.e. things that tend to lead to an early death - of a cell, or an organism...etc. tend to lead to an early death and are therefore less likely to be passed on.

And by the way, you are misinterpreting "null hypothesis" again. The null hypothesis in this case is that there is no teleological relationship between evolved structure and biological functionality. The function is an accidental (natural) consequence of the structure in its environment, not the purpose or direction of the evolutionary process. And so far, I see no reason to reject the null hypothesis.

you're equating the possibility of alien life existing with the possibility of a tea cup orbiting Jupiter. — RogueAI

Now you are misrepresenting what I said - of course alien life is possible - even intelligent alien life and even super-advanced intelligent alien life. But there is absolutely zero evidence that the interference of such alien life in the process of biological evolution on earth is in any way a plausible explanation for apparently irreducible and otherwise inexplicable complexity in biological systems.

You're making a category error. — RogueAI

No I'm not, you were talking about things for which we have zero evidence...so was I.

Key phrase: "as far as we can possibly tell". — RogueAI

Well "as far as we can possibly tell" there are giant silver teapots orbiting all planets beyond our own solar system and entirely invisible moncupators in the back right hand corners of all our fridges. Just because we can't rule something out doesn't mean we have to rule them in.

Oh I see, IC is committed to teleology because you said so. Cool. — StreetlightX

Dear God - what have I got myself into? No - IC is committed to teleology because (as Behe defines IC) it makes the assumption that all the parts of an "irreducibly complex" system 'arose' (either by design or by evolution) to fulfill a particular function as part of a particular system. That is teleology. His whole argument is that without one or other parts of the irreducibly complex system, evolution would never have given rise to the other parts because they would have had no function. But in reality, parts of systems evolve into parts of other systems sometimes when the original function (if there even was one) is no longer required. For example, whale hip bones no longer serve any perambulatory system function, but they do provide a convenient fixing point for the male whale's presumably prodigiously proportioned penis. And just because we can't identify the exact original 'purpose' of all the parts of a particular system, doesn't in any way imply that those parts could not have evolved independently or as parts of earlier co-evolving systems that had entirely unrelated functionalities.