Warren-Flew Debate, Part 1
In my post "On the Knowledge of God", I wrote: "I have come to the conclusion that neither side [theist and atheist] has any arguments that aren't in some way fundamentally flawed. One day, I will make this case in writing." I guess today is the day to get started (but not, yet, to finish). One problem, of course, is which side to address first and which arguments within each side to address. I could, for example, consider the debate between Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, and John Lennox of which a transcript of the debate is here. I could, for example, cover Feser's "Five Proofs of the Existence of God". I could review "On the Existence of Gods" by Saltarelli and Day. I could ignore what everyone else is saying and present my own case. But even when I do get around to that, I'll still want to include answers to objections, which means covering the traditional arguments.
Somewhere, in a place that I can no longer find1, I remember reading that Antony Flew was the "most important atheist you've never heard of." On the other hand, Flew may have abandoned atheism in favor of deism in 2004, six years before his death. One side says the switch may have been the result of senility - a charge which Flew denied2. Still, up until that point, he had an impressive pedigree. And in 1976, he debated Thomas Warren over a period of four nights in Denton, Texas where he argued for the affirmative position that there is no God. The debate is available on Youtube and in print.
My primary goal will be to examine Flew's arguments. My secondary goal will be to dissect Warren's responses to Flew. I have to admit that my sympathies -- but not my worldview -- are with Flew in the debate. My impression is that, of the two debaters, he is the more careful craftsman. He is trying to paint a picture with careful brush strokes while Warren is firing a paint gun. Flew is wielding a scalpel, while Warren is using a chain saw. Both have their uses, even though Flew removes the wrong organ and Warren cuts down the wrong tree.
Because my sympathy is with Flew I will deal with his arguments last. First, I want to show where Warren's responses to Flew fall flat. First, Warren makes the claim that Flew has to hurdle seven walls; escape seven cages, to "know" that God does not exist. Warren presents his chart number 9 (manually recreated with minor edits):
Note that, with one exception, Warren is in the same place. Where Flew must show the eternality of matter, Warren must show the creation of matter. After that, at least according to Christianity, Warren must answer the same questions. Genesis says that we are made from "rocks and dirt" (Gen 2:7). Since the "dust of the earth" is unconscious, the same transition must be made. Conscience, i.e. morality, must also enter into the picture. And so on. If Warren could go back in time, what would he see? Would he see dust forming into a human shape which then begins to move? If so, what would intermediate shapes, if any, look like? How long would it take? Would it happen in an instant? Would it happen in minutes? Would it happen over millions of years? How long would the operation to make Eve take? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? What does Warren think he would see? The only difference between Warren and Flew's position on "life from rocks and dirt" is time scale and the presence, or lack thereof, of agency. Since Warren can't go back in time, how does he know what he claims to know? He may answer, "because the Bible says so," but that is an appeal to authority which, in any other undertaking, would require additional support.
And this leads to a fundamental problem. Neither side addresses what it means "to know". There is no mutual groundwork on the nature and limits of reason, empiricism, or self-evident knowledge. Warren has a way that he escapes the mutual prison cells, but I suspect he wouldn't permit Flew to use the same kind of tools. Warren says:
This simply isn't true. We know that knowledge obtained by empiricism is incomplete, if only because we can't experience everything. Thanks to Kurt Gödel, we know that knowledge obtained by reason, if it is consistent, is incomplete3. Both Warren and Flew need to address what it means to know in the face of uncertainty.
There are some things that we just can't know. And some of the things we claim to know by reason are built upon statements that are taken to be true for no other reason than they are assumed to be true. These axioms, these presuppositions, these self-evident truths may, or may not, conform to external reality (whatever that turns out to be4.) So while something might be logically true, it may not correspond to a correct description of Nature (cf. the "Stoddard" portion of the Spock-Stoddard Test).
Too, each system may give different answers to the same questions5, and a question that has an answer in one system might not have an answer in another. It's important to watch for mental sleight of hand when someone argues the superiority of one system over another because their system has an answer to something the other does not. That's not necessarily a virtue. Their system will have unanswerable questions that might be answered in their opponents system.
Warren will use this technique ("my worldview has an explanation, but Flew's does not") as if this settles the matter. As above, it does not. Furthermore, wittingly or unwittingly, this leads to "God of the gaps" thinking. That is, the idea God has nothing better to do than to be an explanation for things where our knowledge is incomplete. While our knowledge will always be incomplete, the moment a particular gap in our knowledge closes, the need for God in that particular instance goes away. So much for an unchanging God.
Warren also seemed to refuse to accept the problem of the Sorites paradox, that is, the lack of bright lines of demarcation between some objects. How many grains of sand comprise a pile? How many hairs on a head make the difference between bald and hirsute? In the theory of evolution, where did the difference between human and non-human occur? Warren states:
Sure, but this is because Genesis gives an account where this question is answered. But, as stated before, just because there is an answer doesn't mean it corresponds to reality. The existence of an explanation is not evidence of the truth of the explanation. Warren then asks:
Here, Warren is begging the question. What, exactly, does it mean to be human? That we have the form of a human? Clearly, the Sorites paradox comes into play, since a person who is missing limbs isn't less human than than someone who isn't. Is it based on behavior? If I lose my mind to dementia, does my humanity gradually fade? If something passes the Turing Test, can it be said to be human? Is humanity based on genetics? Neanderthal and modern humans apparently had a common ancestry. In practice, we find that the definition of human is fluid. It depends on form -- except when it doesn't. It depends on behavior -- except when it doesn't. It depends on genetics -- except when it doesn't. Warren ought to admit that our humanity is rooted in our being in the image of God -- but this has to be something non-physical. And since it's non-physical, it's hard to define. Warren is using a sharp line which his own theology has to affirm is actually ineffable.
To be continued...
[1] Possibly "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?: The Resurrection Debate", Habermas and Flew.
[2] Asking the senile if they're senile is like asking a drunkard if he's drunk, or an insane person if he's insane.
[3] Gödel's first incompleteness theorem.
[4] The Matrix
[5] Compare Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries.
Somewhere, in a place that I can no longer find1, I remember reading that Antony Flew was the "most important atheist you've never heard of." On the other hand, Flew may have abandoned atheism in favor of deism in 2004, six years before his death. One side says the switch may have been the result of senility - a charge which Flew denied2. Still, up until that point, he had an impressive pedigree. And in 1976, he debated Thomas Warren over a period of four nights in Denton, Texas where he argued for the affirmative position that there is no God. The debate is available on Youtube and in print.
My primary goal will be to examine Flew's arguments. My secondary goal will be to dissect Warren's responses to Flew. I have to admit that my sympathies -- but not my worldview -- are with Flew in the debate. My impression is that, of the two debaters, he is the more careful craftsman. He is trying to paint a picture with careful brush strokes while Warren is firing a paint gun. Flew is wielding a scalpel, while Warren is using a chain saw. Both have their uses, even though Flew removes the wrong organ and Warren cuts down the wrong tree.
Because my sympathy is with Flew I will deal with his arguments last. First, I want to show where Warren's responses to Flew fall flat. First, Warren makes the claim that Flew has to hurdle seven walls; escape seven cages, to "know" that God does not exist. Warren presents his chart number 9 (manually recreated with minor edits):
And this leads to a fundamental problem. Neither side addresses what it means "to know". There is no mutual groundwork on the nature and limits of reason, empiricism, or self-evident knowledge. Warren has a way that he escapes the mutual prison cells, but I suspect he wouldn't permit Flew to use the same kind of tools. Warren says:
...the only way he can arrive at atheism is to come through all of these walls.
This simply isn't true. We know that knowledge obtained by empiricism is incomplete, if only because we can't experience everything. Thanks to Kurt Gödel, we know that knowledge obtained by reason, if it is consistent, is incomplete3. Both Warren and Flew need to address what it means to know in the face of uncertainty.
There are some things that we just can't know. And some of the things we claim to know by reason are built upon statements that are taken to be true for no other reason than they are assumed to be true. These axioms, these presuppositions, these self-evident truths may, or may not, conform to external reality (whatever that turns out to be4.) So while something might be logically true, it may not correspond to a correct description of Nature (cf. the "Stoddard" portion of the Spock-Stoddard Test).
Too, each system may give different answers to the same questions5, and a question that has an answer in one system might not have an answer in another. It's important to watch for mental sleight of hand when someone argues the superiority of one system over another because their system has an answer to something the other does not. That's not necessarily a virtue. Their system will have unanswerable questions that might be answered in their opponents system.
Warren will use this technique ("my worldview has an explanation, but Flew's does not") as if this settles the matter. As above, it does not. Furthermore, wittingly or unwittingly, this leads to "God of the gaps" thinking. That is, the idea God has nothing better to do than to be an explanation for things where our knowledge is incomplete. While our knowledge will always be incomplete, the moment a particular gap in our knowledge closes, the need for God in that particular instance goes away. So much for an unchanging God.
Warren also seemed to refuse to accept the problem of the Sorites paradox, that is, the lack of bright lines of demarcation between some objects. How many grains of sand comprise a pile? How many hairs on a head make the difference between bald and hirsute? In the theory of evolution, where did the difference between human and non-human occur? Warren states:
The truth of the matter is, the theist, who believes in Almighty God, has absolutely no trouble with the question of which was first--a woman or a baby.
Sure, but this is because Genesis gives an account where this question is answered. But, as stated before, just because there is an answer doesn't mean it corresponds to reality. The existence of an explanation is not evidence of the truth of the explanation. Warren then asks:
Have you ever seen anything that was neither human nor non-human?
Here, Warren is begging the question. What, exactly, does it mean to be human? That we have the form of a human? Clearly, the Sorites paradox comes into play, since a person who is missing limbs isn't less human than than someone who isn't. Is it based on behavior? If I lose my mind to dementia, does my humanity gradually fade? If something passes the Turing Test, can it be said to be human? Is humanity based on genetics? Neanderthal and modern humans apparently had a common ancestry. In practice, we find that the definition of human is fluid. It depends on form -- except when it doesn't. It depends on behavior -- except when it doesn't. It depends on genetics -- except when it doesn't. Warren ought to admit that our humanity is rooted in our being in the image of God -- but this has to be something non-physical. And since it's non-physical, it's hard to define. Warren is using a sharp line which his own theology has to affirm is actually ineffable.
To be continued...
[1] Possibly "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?: The Resurrection Debate", Habermas and Flew.
[2] Asking the senile if they're senile is like asking a drunkard if he's drunk, or an insane person if he's insane.
[3] Gödel's first incompleteness theorem.
[4] The Matrix
[5] Compare Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries.
Comments
On the Knowledge of God
[updated 5/21/2020 to include quote from Philosophy In Minutes]
I'm just this guy, you know?1 One of the possible recent mistakes I have made is getting involved with Twitter, in particular, with some of the apologists for theism and for atheism whose goal is to prove by reason that God does, or does not, exist. Over time, having examined both the arguments both for and against, I have come to the conclusion that neither side has any arguments that aren't in some way fundamentally flawed. One day, I will make this case in writing (I still have much more preparation to do first). Still, the failure of one argument doesn't automatically prove the opposite case. So the failure of the arguments on all side does not mean that a good argument doesn't exist. It just means we haven't found it. Yet, once you see the structure of these arguments, their commonalities, and the problems with them, you begin to wonder if it isn't a hopeless enterprise in the first place. Hence my proposed "Spock-Stoddard Test" and "The Zeroth Commandment." To be sure, these are not based on rigorous proof, but merely on informed guesswork. But they encapsulate the notion that whether or not one believes or disbelieves in God is a logically free choice. It is primal. It is not entailed by other considerations. You either do, or you don't, for no other reason that you do, or you don't. Post-hoc rationalizations don't count.
When one is, as it were, the "lone voice crying in the desert" with an opinion that appears to be relatively rare, at least in the circles I run in, it's gratifying to find others who have come to the same conclusion. Clearly, group cohesion doesn't make my position true or false, but it does make it less lonely. Herewith are a few quotes that I've come across along the way.
[1] Said of Zaphod Beeblebrox, "The Restaurant and the End of the Universe"
I'm just this guy, you know?1 One of the possible recent mistakes I have made is getting involved with Twitter, in particular, with some of the apologists for theism and for atheism whose goal is to prove by reason that God does, or does not, exist. Over time, having examined both the arguments both for and against, I have come to the conclusion that neither side has any arguments that aren't in some way fundamentally flawed. One day, I will make this case in writing (I still have much more preparation to do first). Still, the failure of one argument doesn't automatically prove the opposite case. So the failure of the arguments on all side does not mean that a good argument doesn't exist. It just means we haven't found it. Yet, once you see the structure of these arguments, their commonalities, and the problems with them, you begin to wonder if it isn't a hopeless enterprise in the first place. Hence my proposed "Spock-Stoddard Test" and "The Zeroth Commandment." To be sure, these are not based on rigorous proof, but merely on informed guesswork. But they encapsulate the notion that whether or not one believes or disbelieves in God is a logically free choice. It is primal. It is not entailed by other considerations. You either do, or you don't, for no other reason that you do, or you don't. Post-hoc rationalizations don't count.
When one is, as it were, the "lone voice crying in the desert" with an opinion that appears to be relatively rare, at least in the circles I run in, it's gratifying to find others who have come to the same conclusion. Clearly, group cohesion doesn't make my position true or false, but it does make it less lonely. Herewith are a few quotes that I've come across along the way.
He is not in the business of giving them arguments that will prove he has some derivative right to their attention; he is only inviting them to believe. This is the hard stone in the gracious peach of his Good News: salvation is not by works, be they physical, intellectual, moral, or spiritual; it is strictly by faith in him. ... Jesus obviously does not answer many questions from you or me. Which is why apologetics-the branch of theology that seeks to argue for the justifiability of God's words and deeds-is always such a questionable enterprise. Jesus just doesn't argue. ... He does not reach out to convince us; he simply stands there in all the attracting/repelling fullness of hisexousia and dares us to believe. -- Robert Farrar Capon. Parables of Judgment
Jesus did not, indeed, support His theism by argument; He did not provide in advance answers to the Kantian attack upon the theistic proofs. -- J. Gresham Machen,Christianity and Liberalism
Like probably nothing else, all authentic knowledge of God is participatory knowledge. I must say this directly and clearly because it is a very different way of knowing reality—and it should be the unique, open-horizoned gift of people of faith. But we ourselves have almost entirely lost this way of knowing, ever since the food fights of the Reformation and the rationalism of the Enlightenment, leading to fundamentalism on the Right and atheism or agnosticism on the Left. Neither of these know how to know! We have sacrificed our unique telescope for a very inadequate microscope.The Divine Dance
...
In other words, God (and uniquely the Trinity) cannot be known as we know any other object—such as a machine, an objective idea, or a tree—which we are able to “objectify.” We look at objects, and we judge them from a distance through our normal intelligence, parsing out their varying parts, separating this from that, presuming that to understand the parts is always to be able to understand the whole. But divine things can never be objectified in this way; they can only be “subjectified” by becoming one with them! When neither yourself nor the other is treated as a mere object, but both rest in an I-Thou of mutual admiration, you have spiritual knowing. Some of us call this contemplative knowing. -- Richard Rohr,
Reformed theology regards the existence of God as an entirely reasonable assumption, it does not claim the ability to demonstrate this by rational argumentation. Dr. Kuyper speaks as follows of the attempt to do this: “The attempt to prove God’s existence is either useless or unsuccessful. -- Louis Berkhof,Systematic Theology
Today, it is generally agreed that there can be no logical proof either way for the existence of God, and that this is purely a matter of faith. -- Marcus Weeks,Philosophy in Minutes
[1] Said of Zaphod Beeblebrox, "The Restaurant and the End of the Universe"
The Zeroth Commandment
I sometimes despair over the existence of Christian apologists who try to prove the existence of God. Some, like William Craig Lane, who are well known, are like multi-megaton MIRV ICBMs -- all aimed directly at their feet. Very powerful but ultimately useless. It's as if they are unaware of the Zeroth Commandment:
I am the LORD your God. You shall have no other reasons before Me.
Spock-Stoddard Test
I would like to propose the "Spock-Stoddard" test for arguments presented by apologists of every kind:
It is not logical, but it is often true.
-- Spock, "Amok Time"
It’s logical, but I wonder if it’s correct?
-- Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, "Dark Shadows", #132
Notes on Feser's "From Aristotle..."
[updated 5/5/2020 for clarity, 5/6/2020 to add an aside on qualia]
Some notes on Edward Feser's "From Aristotle to John Searle and Back Again: Formal Causes, Teleology, and Computation in Nature". This is not a detailed rebuttal; rather it's an outline of points of disagreement with various statements in his paper. To better understand why I disagree the way I do, previous experience with the lambda (λ) calculus is helpful. Reviewing my disagreement with Searle's Chinese Room Argument may also be useful. I wrote that article over a year ago and promised to revisit it in more detail. One of these days. Still, my understanding of Searle's argument is this:
The conclusion simply doesn't follow and I don't understand how it manages to impress so many people. One possibility is confirmation bias.1 Fortunately, one of the Fathers of computer science, John McCarthy, independently came to the same conclusion. See "John Searle's Chinese Room Argument".
Feser makes the same kinds of mistakes as Searle.
From John Searles's Chinese Room paper, quoted by Feser.
True, but incomplete. The λ calculus has syntax (λ expressions) and semantics (λ evaluation).
This is, of course, false. The programming is the wiring. One could, in theory (although it might be nigh impossible in practice to untangle how symbols flow through the wires), recover the method by reverse engineering the wiring. Then one could determine whether addition or quaddition was being performed. Since the methods are different, the wiring would be different.
How nature behaves is empirical fact. Putting labels on different aspects of that behavior is a matter of convention. Searle is objecting to the very nature of nature.
This is false for systems that compute. For the example of a Turing machine, the wiring, the physical structure, is both necessary and sufficient. It is a self-referential structure. For systems with less computational power than a Turing machine, the wiring will be simpler.
The λ calculus consists of λ expressions and λ evaluation. λ evaluation is just a list of substitution rules for symbols, and symbols are just distinguishable objects. In this sense, the program (λ expressions) and computer (λ evalution) distinction exists. However, λ evaluation can be written in terms of λ expressions. And here the program/computer distinction disappears. It's all program (if you observe the behavior) and it's all computer (if you look at the hardware). A λ calculus evaluator can be written in the λ calculus (see Paul Graham's The Roots of Lisp) which is then arranged as a sequence of NAND gates (or whatever logic gates you care to use. Cf. the Feynman quote, above). So it's very hard to know if something is a "bug" or a "feature" from the standpoint of the computer. It's just doing what it's doing. It's only as you impose a subjective view of what it should be doing, and how it should do it, that bugs and features appear. Nature says "reproduce" (if one may be permitted an anthropomorphism). And nature has produced objects that do that spectacularly.
The λ calculus simply specifies a set of symbols and the set of operations on those symbols that comprise what we call computation. What needs to be understood is that symbols as meaningless objects and symbols as meaning are the same symbols. The λ calculus does not have one set of symbols that have no meaning and another set of symbols that have meaning. There is only one alphabet of a least two different symbols. If you follow a symbol through a computational network, you can't easily tell at some point in the network, whether the object is being used as a symbol or if it's being used as a value. Only the network knows. We might be able to reverse engineer it by painstaking probing of the system, but even there our efforts might be thwarted. After all, a symbol could be used one way in the network and a completely different way in another part of the network. That is, computers don't have to be consistent in the way they use symbols. All that matters is the output. Even our computing systems aren't always consistent in the way things are arranged. For example, when little-endian systems interface with big-endian peripherals. Due to the complexity of "knowing" the system from the outside, you have to hope that the system can tell you what it means and that you can translate what it tells you into your internal ideas of meaning. I can generally understand what my dog is telling me, but that's because I anthropomorphize his actions. I have to. It's the only way I can "understand" him.
True, but irrelevant for systems that get input from the environment. That is, computers need not be closed systems. With the correct peripherals, a computer can take as input all of the behavior of the universe.
The fallacy of the false dilemma. Another alternative is to deeply understand the "mechanistic" picture for what it actually says.
[1] Battlestar Galactica: "I'm not a Cylon..."
[2] Simulating Physics with Computers, Interational Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 21. Nos. 6/7, 1982
[3] The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms, Section 1.1; Donald Knuth
[4] Things A Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
Some notes on Edward Feser's "From Aristotle to John Searle and Back Again: Formal Causes, Teleology, and Computation in Nature". This is not a detailed rebuttal; rather it's an outline of points of disagreement with various statements in his paper. To better understand why I disagree the way I do, previous experience with the lambda (λ) calculus is helpful. Reviewing my disagreement with Searle's Chinese Room Argument may also be useful. I wrote that article over a year ago and promised to revisit it in more detail. One of these days. Still, my understanding of Searle's argument is this:
We can, in theory, construct a machine that can translate from Chinese to another language, without it understanding Chinese. Therefore, we cannot construct a machine that can both translate and understand Chinese.
The conclusion simply doesn't follow and I don't understand how it manages to impress so many people. One possibility is confirmation bias.1 Fortunately, one of the Fathers of computer science, John McCarthy, independently came to the same conclusion. See "John Searle's Chinese Room Argument".
Feser makes the same kinds of mistakes as Searle.
Syntax is not sufficient for semantics.
From John Searles's Chinese Room paper, quoted by Feser.
True, but incomplete. The λ calculus has syntax (λ expressions) and semantics (λ evaluation).
The problem is this. The status of being a "symbol," Searle argues, is simply not an objective or intrinsic feature of the physical world. It is purely conventional or observer-relative.
- This is exactly right, that is, it is observer-relative but this isn't a problem. In the λ calculus, meaning is the arbitrary association of a symbol with another set of arbitrary symbols. It is simply an arbitrary association of this with that. What Searle and Feser miss is that the most fundamental thats are our sense impressions of the (presumably) external world. Because our brains are built mostly the same way, and because we perceive nature in mostly the same way, we share a common set of "this with that" mappings, upon which we then build additional shared meaning.
- This is why there is no problem with qualia. It doesn't matter how a brain encodes this and that. it is the association that determines meaning, not the qualia themselves. (See here).
- In the final analysis, nature observes itself, since we observers are a part of nature. As the Minbari say, "We are 'star stuff.' We are the universe, made manifest - trying to figure itself out."
It's status as a "computer" would be observer-relative simply because a computer is not a "natural kind," but rather a sort of artifact.
- First, as Feynman wrote, "Computer theory has been developed to a point where it realizes that it doesn't make any difference; when you get to a universal computer, it doesn't matter how it's manufactured, how it's actually made."2
- We have been made by nature. We can, and likely will, argue forever over how this actually happened, but this paper cannot concern itself with either "why does the universe exist?" or "why does the universe exist the way it does?".
- We observe ourselves ("Cogito ergo sum").
In short, Searle says, "computational states are notdiscovered within the physics, they are assigned to the physics.
- I think this betrays "linear parallel" thinking. This is "this" and that is "that" and the two don't meet. But what Searle and Feser miss is that nature is self-referential. Nature can describe itself. And that's why the objection, "Hence, just as no physicist, biologist, or neuroscientist would dream of making use of the concept of a chair in explaining the natural phenomena in which they deal, neither should they make use of the notion of computation." is wrong.
- Chairs aren't self-referential objects. Computation, and intelligence, -- and nature -- are. Recursion is fundamental to computation. In implementing a λ calculus evaluator, Eval calls Apply; Apply calls Eval. We may (or may not) not use the concept of "chair" to explain natural phenomena, but we can't escape using the concept of intelligence to explain intelligence. This computer science aphorism is instructive: to understand recursion you must first understand recursion.
For, whatever we say about whatwe mean when we use terms like "plus," "addition," and so on, there are no physical features of a computer that can determine whether it is carrying out addition or quaddition, no matter how far we extend its outputs.
This is, of course, false. The programming is the wiring. One could, in theory (although it might be nigh impossible in practice to untangle how symbols flow through the wires), recover the method by reverse engineering the wiring. Then one could determine whether addition or quaddition was being performed. Since the methods are different, the wiring would be different.
[Searle] is not saying, whether there are [rigourously specifiable empirical criteria for whether something ... is a computer] or not, that something fitting those criteria counts as a computer is ultimately a matter of convention, rather than observer independent facts.
How nature behaves is empirical fact. Putting labels on different aspects of that behavior is a matter of convention. Searle is objecting to the very nature of nature.
[Searle holds] that having a certain physical structure is anecessary condition for a system's carrying out a certain computation. Searle's point, though, is that is nevertheless not a sufficient condition.
This is false for systems that compute. For the example of a Turing machine, the wiring, the physical structure, is both necessary and sufficient. It is a self-referential structure. For systems with less computational power than a Turing machine, the wiring will be simpler.
If evolution produced something that was chair-like, it would not follow that it had produced a chair, and if evolution produced something symbol like, it would not follow that it had produced symbols.
- First, this is the Sorities paradox on display. At what point is something like x actually x? It depends on definitions and definitions can be fuzzy.
- Second, and absolutely devastating to Feser's argument, is that in the λ calculus, symbols are meaningless.
- Third, in the λ calculus, symbols are nothing more than distinct objects. And nature is full of distinct objects that can be used as symbols. Positive and negative charge is important because they are distinguishable and they are self-distinguishing!
- Fourth, how evolution builds a self-referential structure in which symbols acquire meaning is through the equivalent of λ evaluation is, of course, contentious.
If the computer scientist's distinction between "bugs" and "features" has application to natural phenomena, so too does the distinction between "software" and "hardware."
The λ calculus consists of λ expressions and λ evaluation. λ evaluation is just a list of substitution rules for symbols, and symbols are just distinguishable objects. In this sense, the program (λ expressions) and computer (λ evalution) distinction exists. However, λ evaluation can be written in terms of λ expressions. And here the program/computer distinction disappears. It's all program (if you observe the behavior) and it's all computer (if you look at the hardware). A λ calculus evaluator can be written in the λ calculus (see Paul Graham's The Roots of Lisp) which is then arranged as a sequence of NAND gates (or whatever logic gates you care to use. Cf. the Feynman quote, above). So it's very hard to know if something is a "bug" or a "feature" from the standpoint of the computer. It's just doing what it's doing. It's only as you impose a subjective view of what it should be doing, and how it should do it, that bugs and features appear. Nature says "reproduce" (if one may be permitted an anthropomorphism). And nature has produced objects that do that spectacularly.
But no such observer-relative purposes can be appealed to in the case of the information the computationalist attributes to physical states in nature.
The λ calculus simply specifies a set of symbols and the set of operations on those symbols that comprise what we call computation. What needs to be understood is that symbols as meaningless objects and symbols as meaning are the same symbols. The λ calculus does not have one set of symbols that have no meaning and another set of symbols that have meaning. There is only one alphabet of a least two different symbols. If you follow a symbol through a computational network, you can't easily tell at some point in the network, whether the object is being used as a symbol or if it's being used as a value. Only the network knows. We might be able to reverse engineer it by painstaking probing of the system, but even there our efforts might be thwarted. After all, a symbol could be used one way in the network and a completely different way in another part of the network. That is, computers don't have to be consistent in the way they use symbols. All that matters is the output. Even our computing systems aren't always consistent in the way things are arranged. For example, when little-endian systems interface with big-endian peripherals. Due to the complexity of "knowing" the system from the outside, you have to hope that the system can tell you what it means and that you can translate what it tells you into your internal ideas of meaning. I can generally understand what my dog is telling me, but that's because I anthropomorphize his actions. I have to. It's the only way I can "understand" him.
Moreover, as John Mayfield notes, "an important requirement for an algorithm is that it must have an outcome," and "instructions" of the sort represented by an algorithm are "goal-oriented."
- It is true that algorithms must terminate. That's the definition of "algorithm".3 But algorithms are a subset of computing. A computational process need not terminate.
- All computing networks are goal oriented. The fundamental unit of computation is the combination of symbols and selection therefrom. By definition, the behavior introduces a direction from input to output, from many to fewer. (One might quibble that the idea of inversion takes one symbol and produces the "opposite" symbol, but one can implement "not" using "nand" gates, and "nand" gates are goal oriented.) So if logic gates are goal oriented, systems built out of gates are goal oriented. The goal of the individual gate may be determinable; determining the goal of the system built out of these elements can be extremely difficult, if not impossible to fathom. Sometimes I understand my dog. Other times, all I see is emptiness when I look into his eyes. All we can do is compare the behavior of a system (or organism) to ours and try to establish common ground.
The information content of the output [of a computation] can be less than the input but not greater.
True, but irrelevant for systems that get input from the environment. That is, computers need not be closed systems. With the correct peripherals, a computer can take as input all of the behavior of the universe.
Darwin's account shows that the apparent teleology of biological process is an illusion.
- Underlying this claim is the idea that randomness exhibits purposelessness.
- However, one can also equally make the claim that randomness hides purpose. As Donald Knuth wrote, "Indeed, computer scientists have proved that certain important computational tasks can be done much more efficiently with random numbers than they could possibly ever be done by deterministic procedure. Many of today's best computational algorithms, like methods for searching the internet, are based on randomization."4
- Whether someone thinks randomness is purposeless or hides purpose is based on one's a priori worldview.
The key is to reject that [mechanistic] picture and return to the one it supplanted [Aristotle-Scholastic].
The fallacy of the false dilemma. Another alternative is to deeply understand the "mechanistic" picture for what it actually says.
[1] Battlestar Galactica: "I'm not a Cylon..."
[2] Simulating Physics with Computers, Interational Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 21. Nos. 6/7, 1982
[3] The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms, Section 1.1; Donald Knuth
[4] Things A Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About