EVolution cant explain ants!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Carico]

Evolution can't explain anything except that men can contradict themselves.

 

[kedaman]

I couldn't have put it better myself

 

[robot23]

Evolution can't explain anything except that men can contradict themselves.

why don't you stop wasting everyone time
if you want to debate, do it by backing up what you say

 

[DJ_Ghost]

I would like to know where he says the highlighted. By the underdetermination (Quine Duhem hypothesis) though theories entail observational consequences, observations do not entail any particular theories. Thus it is impossible to verify nor falsify any hypothesis. His non-uniqueness thesis says for any theory, T, and any given body of evidence supporting T, there is at least one rival (i.e. contrary) to T that is as well supported as T.

Various places, some times more clearly than others. I will have to dig through my social science library to find the references I recall from my masters foundation year, but if I was to hazard a guess I would say I was first introduced to Quine in one of Smiths books, Social science in question perhaps, or one of the books dedicated to the history and philosophy of science. In which case they are taken form both papers and seminars from Quine.

Even the wikepedia link you provided alludes to it, take careful note of how he is at pains to point out that evidence alone is insufficient to falsify a theory.

Ghost

 

[kedaman]

What do you want to falsify it with then, dogmas?

 

[FieryBalrog]

No one has answered the origional question. What sort of selections could have taken place for ants to evolve into the complex social structure that we see today? The origional poster believed that the theory of evolution can not explain a lot of what we observe in ants, so the theory must not be a valid one.

Ants are haplodiploid, this has already been pointed out. Being haplodiploid has genetic consequences in terms of how related kin are. Theories of kin selection predict altruistic behaviors increase with the relatedness of the community. Roughly, this is one of the mechanisms through which ant colonies may have evolved, and as Jet Black pointed out, there are intermediates.

 

[FieryBalrog]

kedaman, semantic wrangling doesn't do anyone any good, it just confuses the issue. You may want to play word games to try to "disprove" evolution, but you know what this reminds me of? Have you heard of Euler's "proof" to Diderot?

 

[DJ_Ghost]

What do you want to falsify it with then, dogmas?

I want to falsify it with evidence, but we are not talking about me we are talking about Quine, and that is what he claimed not me. If you find his argument so silly why did you bring it up in the first place and cling to it like a life raft?

Ghost

 

[kedaman]

cling on to your dogmas Firebalrog, I'm not trying to prove theism My argument against evolution is as follows:

1. Complexity cannot be reduced
2. Thus if greater complexity was found, then it has always existed.
3. Thus all complexity has always existed.
4. Thus there is no evolution.

 

[DJ_Ghost]

cling on to your dogmas Firebalrog, I'm not trying to prove theism My argument against evolution is as follows:

1. Complexity cannot be reduced
2. Thus if greater complexity was found, then it has always existed.
3. Thus all complexity has always existed.
4. Thus there is no evolution.

That's nice, but you provide no evidence to support any of that. I suppose your bringing Quine into this is therefore intended to serve as a falsificationist escape clause, which is ironic really.

Ghost

 

[kedaman]

I want to falsify it with evidence, but we are not talking about me we are talking about Quine, and that is what he claimed not me. If you find his argument so silly why did you bring it up in the first place and cling to it like a life raft?

Ghost

I don't think Quine said such, but if you find anything that shows that he did, then ok, I retract my claims that Quine said such, but from what I've read so far about undetermination, that is what it means.

 

[kedaman]

That's nice, but you provide no evidence to support any of that. I suppose your bringing Quine into this is therefore intended to serve as a falsificationist escape clause, which is ironic really.

Ghost

Nope. This is shown by internal inconsistency.

 

[FieryBalrog]

cling on to your dogmas Firebalrog, I'm not trying to prove theism My argument against evolution is as follows:

1. Complexity cannot be reduced
2. Thus if greater complexity was found, then it has always existed.
3. Thus all complexity has always existed.
4. Thus there is no evolution.

you might want to explain what premise one really means. Are you saying that complex structures can never be formed from simple processes?

 

[Tomk80]

cling on to your dogmas Firebalrog, I'm not trying to prove theism My argument against evolution is as follows:

1. Complexity cannot be reduced
2. Thus if greater complexity was found, then it has always existed.
3. Thus all complexity has always existed.
4. Thus there is no evolution.

Please make a new thread. Define complexity as pertaining to biological systems. Prove that this complexity cannot be reduced. I'll see you there.

 

[Tomk80]

You say that an entity changes no matter how you define it, I'm saying that an entity is not alive unless it performs certain function, nor is an ant unless it performs a certain function. If an entity X has a certain behavior B(X), then it has a certain function B, but B is irreducible to phenomena; no amount of evidence can show that B(X) nor ~B(X). Thus when you say that behaviour changes, the only thing that happens is that its behaviour has been disconfirmed, not that such change really happened.

At this point, I will assume for a moment that you are correct. In which case you have just disproved the behavioral sciences. According to you, we can put psychology, sociology and behavioral biology on the scrapheap. Just to be on equal footing, is that what you propose?

And then, what about physics? What about chemistry? Particles might not be alive, they certainly show a certain behavior, and this behavior changes in relation to other particles. So can we also not draw conclusions here? Is that what you are saying?

 

[DJ_Ghost]

I don't think Quine said such, but if you find anything that shows that he did, then ok, I retract my claims that Quine said such, but from what I've read so far about undetermination, that is what it means.

Okay that sounds fair. I apologise for having mentally written you off as another dogmatised without an open mind, looks like you are not. Perhaps I am growing jaded from seeing so many in the past.

Nope. This is shown by internal inconsistency.

Which is incidentally one of the alternative methods for falsification that have been proposed by some forms of post undeterminatists, although others deny its utitly for falsifying a theory for much the same reason Quine felt falsification in relation to evidence was suspect, that being that theories are elastic and can be modified by throwing out hypothesise.

I generally feel Quine would have felt that internal inconsistency was even less reliable a method of falsification than evidence.

Anyway, sorry I am going off on a bit of a tangent (probably the chance to discuss Quine for a while), I am not convinced that the ToE is internally inconsistent, theories that have endured that long rarely are, and I have never seen an apparent inconsistency that was not the product of some one misunderstand either the theory or the evidence upon which it is premised.

Ghost

 

[Split Rock]

cling on to your dogmas Firebalrog, I'm not trying to prove theism My argument against evolution is as follows:

1. Complexity cannot be reduced
2. Thus if greater complexity was found, then it has always existed.
3. Thus all complexity has always existed.
4. Thus there is no evolution.

This is ridicuolous, as systems have a tendency to become more complex over time as their parts become more interdependent. We can see this with human societies (Urban systems for example).

 

[n0va]

Forget about ants, humans seemed to be way more complex than all other animals, i wonder where the big leap in complexity came from. And for those who say humans started primitive and worked there way up, all other animals haven't evolved their way up to anything even remotely close to us.

 

[Bible Defender]

Amen.. our brains are a billion times more advanced than any other animal because we are a special creation, not some blind watchmaker's mistake!

 

[larry lunchpail]

Forget about ants, humans seemed to be way more complex than all other animals, i wonder where the big leap in complexity came from. And for those who say humans started primitive and worked there way up, all other animals haven't evolved their way up to anything even remotely close to us.

aliens, obviously. im dead serious. aliens came and did experiments on us and cross bred us with their own genes to use as slaves to mine gold to take back to their planet. its in genesis people! well, the original one. by the sumerians.

but things have a tendancy to stay simple, and they do. complex organisms like us are the fringe exception. evolutions goal is not to become more complex, thats a rare treat. its only concern is survival, and most of the time simplicity aids survival more easily. you seam to think its goal based but its actually not.