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Humans are said to be unique in virtue of our beliefs, desires, and language use. Or so we thought. That was until we envisaged the possibility of machines doing what we do and doing it better. A.I. paranoia has fed Hollywood and conspiracy theorists in equal measure, but Alex Rosenberg argues that the problem with A.I. fantasies is our presumption that beliefs and desires can be replicated. They can't and that's because they don't exist, not even in humans. Thus, the threat to human distinctiveness comes not from the possibility of A.I. but the possibility that what we think makes us unique is an illusion: ...we are convinced we have something AI will always lack: We are agents in the world, whose decisions, choices, actions are made meaningful by the content of the belief/desire pairings that bring them about. But what if the theory of mind that underwrites our distinctiveness is build on sand, is just another useful illusion foisted upon us by the Darwinian processes ...

Feser on scientism : Scientism is simply not a coherent position. You cannot avoid having distinctively philosophical and extra-scientific theoretical commitments, because the very attempt to do so entails having distinctively philosophical and extra-scientific theoretical commitments. And if you think that these commitments are rationally justifiable ones – and of course, anyone beholden to scientism thinks his view is paradigmatically rational – then you are implicitly admitting that there can be such a thing as a rationally justifiablethesis which is not a scientific thesis. Which is, of course, what scientism denies. Thus scientism is unavoidably self-defeating.

"...pragmatism is perhaps the worst idea that philosophy ever had" says recently deceased philosopher, Jerry Fodor. Not only is it bad, but according to Fodor it is false, and necessarily so. Pragmatism suggests that rationalists have got it all the wrong way round. Instead of having thoughts about the world, we make plans in it. We can believe in the existence of material objects because belief in material objects is indispensable for science and science is what we want to do in the world. The problem is that it is impossible to put the cart before the horse. Whichever way one sets it up, being committed to the truth value of a proposition is  always  prior to everything else. Fodor puts it this way: "...the ability to think the kind of thoughts that have truth-values is, in the nature of the case, prior to the ability to plan a course of action. The reason is perfectly transparent: Acting on plans...requires being able to think about the world. You can't thin...

I recently got into a debate over young earth creationism. One objection to the view went as follows: "A scientific theory is a concise set of statements which has broad explanatory and predictive power within its purview. In order to be considered scientific, a hypothesis must predict what must or must not be observed if it is true. If such things are not observed/observed, then the hypothesis is considered falsified. [Scientific Creationism] does not espouse any idea which makes exclusive predictions about what must or must not be observed. Every biological observation falls under "God made it that way" or borrows from evolutionary theory and says "it adapted that way." Every piece of challenging evidence (i.e. all of it) is explained as "God could have..." In other words, no matter what is observed, it's considered acceptable under [a creation] "theory," while nothing could apparently falsify it. Thus, it does not meet the neces...

According to a fairly standard realist view of scientific explanation, a given set of phenomena is explained by postulating some unseen entity or causal process. The entity or process in question is not directly observable, but is explained by an analogy with something with which we are more familiar. Consider our conception of gas molecules. We postulate the activities of gas molecules by an appeal to commonly encountered spherical objects such as billiard balls. In same way billiard balls bounce, gas molecules are said to bounce. The analogy is necessary for the explanation because the gas molecules are not directly observable. A realist concludes from the performance of such an explanation (how well the explanation explains the phenomena in question) that gas molecules and the causal processes they are involved in are real. J.P. Moreland comments (and cites agreement from Stanley Jaki and Bas van Fraassen) that if we think this is the correct view of scientific explanation, t...

In honor of earth day, here are three fallacious earth day arguments: The first one suggests that scientific research strongly entails some particular government policy. It is used to suggest that any disagreement over government policy is directly related to one's attitude toward science. Here is a formal version: If you accept science, then you accept policy P. You reject policy P Therefore, you reject science A good example of this sort of fallacy is provided by Bill Nye (a good source of silly fallacies , by the way). "All science is political" he said. And then he proceeded to bash the highly qualified scientist who disagreed with Nye's position on the role of government in reducing emissions. The problem with the argument is that even if one accepts the most 'alarmist' conclusions about human damage of the environment, this does not entail any particular government policy. The second sort of argument links a worldview with science such tha...

There is a clock in DNA. Does it show how old the species is or not? We have less than 5% of DNA's function. This is small fruit and does not conclusively tell us that ancestry is common or not. So, what do the number of DNA differences show? DNA resides in the nucleus and mitochondrial DNA resides in a separate part of the cell. The mitochondria is passed on through the maternal line (the sperm unites only with the nucleus). DNA has its own language comprising of four letters, ATCG. We can compare two DNA strands. When there is similarity and difference we can see it. DNA strands might be 80% similar and 20% different. We have a huge database of DNA and we can make some conclusions. Evolution says that all differences are the result of mutation and the product of change over time. So, a chimpanzee and a human. Differences = mutations x time x 2. So, what would happen given 6 million years. If this is so, then there would be something like 25,000 mutations. But there a...

Dennis Venema I am sitting waiting for part 2. Some comments on what I've heard so far: So far the talks have not focused on Adam. Instead, we have heard arguments for the thesis that the similarities of traits across species do not show common ancestry and that they do. Neither argument is conclusive since both arguments conclude from that the data does not disconfirm the respective theories. Conclusions are thin. Design was a feature of Dr Jeanson's talk - all the data is compatible with design. But this is true even if evolution is true. The data would not be radically different given either evolution or young earth. This might be a fairly predictable conclusion given the data presented by Dr Jeanson, but interestingly, the data presented by Dr Venema is similar - none of if shows evolution over young earth. So, nothing of what we have heard so far is conclusive for either side of the debate. Okay, Dr Venema is on. Here are my notes: In the transition from geocent...

Dr Venema from BioLogos is professor of Biology at Trinity Western University in BC, Canada. Dr Venema is a theistic evolutionist (or evolutionary creationist, as he calls it). Here are my notes: Three assumptions: If every square inch of creation is under the Lordship of Christ, then science is an act of worship.  If God is the author of both books--the Bible and nature--then there cannot be a contradiction.  If there is apparent conflict between our study of the Bible and nature, it is only apparent.  A theory is an explanatory framework that has survived testing and makes accurate predictions.  Evolution is this kind of theory. It makes accurate predictions, holds up to testing and has not yet suffered from disconfirming evidence. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (Dobzhansky). Speciation is much like the development of languages over time. Populations become separated and language changes a develops through incre...

[DISCLAIMER: I'm 'live-blogging' so there will be errors, maybe many] I'm at the Evolution, Genetics, and the Historical Adam Conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The question for the conference is: Did Adam exist? The debate has achieved critical mass and now has its own Four Views book, an accomplishment reserved for only the most debated of topics. The speakers today represent two sides of the debate - Dr Nathaniel Jeanson argues that the Genesis account should be taken literally - six days, less than 10,000 years ago, and a guy, formed from the dust and the breath of God, called Adam, the first man. Dr Venema argues that Adam... well I don't yet know but will let you know when he speaks... presumably that Adam, at least as Genesis describes him, did not exist. Both represent leading Christian organizations devoted to their respective positions. Answers In Genesis, an organization known for a massive Noah's Ark in Indiana and fr...

A Christian worldview maintains that in a sense the world has no bottom. The doctrine of creation out of nothing denies the eternal existence of any ‘prime matter’. There is no matter that is just ‘there,’ before God starts to work. Rather, God created everything, not just structure on top of previously existing prime matter. And God created everything by his word. The word introduces the structure and the meaning. The law of God is the continued structure for the world. The world has no ultimate independence from this word or law of God, but is utterly dependent. Understanding the world does not mean understanding the prime matter, because there is no such thing. It means understanding the world as governed by the word of God. And that can only mean understanding the word of God, for that word simply is the wisdom that gives rationality to everything we see. [1] If science is in need of redemption, then there must be something wrong with it. But what? Vern Poythress argues that...