cypress

So the only differences are how how they are structured, sequenced and the fact leghaemoglobin is more efficient at attaching to oxygen.

 

Would it be possible to replace normal haemoglobin with leghaemoglobin?

Not it would not, since oxygen transport affinity involves many many coordinated systems that would likewise require replacement.

What would be the disadvantages/advantages of having leghaemoglobin instead of haemoglobin?

The obvious disadvantage would be that it would not function correctly, for the reason mentioned above.

Don't write[or speak or think] nonsense. DNA do not contain any information. That are simply molecules. Like an other. They do not use information to replicate. The replicate because they react with other chemicals. If it reacts with the right chemicals it replicates.

Life happened...then mutated then adapted then evolved and so on and so on until time=now and you are now reading this.

 

...why do the rules tell me not to shout at you for using religion?

Here is a simple description of the process. Please note that they use "genetic information" as well as the other terms to describe the process.

Here is another. There are thousands of websites that confirm my description. One of the most difficult aspects of the race to discover the structure of DNA was the fact that most researchers were looking for a system more akin to your description. It was Crick who posited that the patterns responsible to determining protein sequences was actually encoded into a system that was independent of chemical affinity and therefore capable of storing any pattern of sequences that allowed his team to eventually succeed.

I'm sure we've all used objects for a dramatically different function than their original designer's intent. Similarly, I can use information to perform a function significantly different from its original purpose.

 

For example, for making poetry.

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/46413-computer-generated-poetry/

I don't see any way one could demonstrate that the output of that program was not intentionally designed. Are you attempting to change the definition to fit your intentions?

I also don't see any way these false arguments help improve the case for evolutionary theory. The theory is in crisis because it does not conform with what it posits. It posits that the processes conform to methodological naturalism but the advocates cannot show how it obtains the molecular and informational order required to conform with entropy laws. It posits that natural selection drives a continual pathway of thousands upon thousands of stepwise changes but no pathway greater than 3 steps has been identified.

That would just be appeal to ignorance, and shifting the burden of proof.

Skeptic made the claim that function does not require intent, and I responded that his statement has not been established. It is his burden to prove. When the cause of functional systems is established, we find intentioned design, thus it is reasonable to conclude that function requires intent until it is shown otherwise.

...but DNA isn't information cypress...DNA is a molecule...just like all the other molecules...unique only in the fact that it replicates and adapts.

 

Your argument is still irrelevant to the discussion. This topic is not fore evolution but for the thing in the first post...just like in all the other topics.

 

If you want to discuss info' entropy and evolution make a new topic.

DNA are molecules that contain information. The information is is transcribed, transmitted and then processed to generate functional systems and manage and control cell processes. The reality that biological systems contain low entropy information encoded into a high entropy carrier and then use that information to replicate, to build and to manage cell function is very relevant to evolutionary theory because the theory posits that all biological life and the systems contained in biological organisms is a result of evolutionary processes. The proponents of evolutionary theory have yet to demonstrate how this very low entropy information was generated in the first place and how new additional low entropy information required to allow for diversity was derived without an original source of low entropy information. this is just one of the ways to demonstrate that evolutionary theory has not been confirmed, because by its posit it must conform to physical law including the requirement that at the system level, including inputs and outputs all forms of net order does not increase.

I have never seen proper demonstration that function does not require intent in the sense Skeptic suggests. Since it is unknown if the entire universe has a materialistic cause or designed , it seems impossible at this point to demonstrate things and processes we call natural function without intent.

Information entropy applies to information of all kinds and wherever it exists. It is not limited to communication and it is not limited to the very high entropy random strings skeptic prefers to discuss. It also includes low entropy information including the functional information contained within DNA, software programs and instruction manuals. Cosmological studies include a rich discussion of information and information entropy.

In the context of this thread the primary consideration is changes to entropy when considering the entire system including inputs and outputs. Skeptic waxes on about generation of random strings of high entropy information but avoids a descriptive analysis of how a system of mater actually does decrease the information entropy to eventually contain the low entropy information contained in functional DNA based systems. He has no validated explanation for the source of this order.

Evolution is not a 'thing' subject to laws. It is the build up of genetic mutation leading to the rise of new species from old ones. Therefore physics does not apply as there is nothing for it to apply onto. Evolution is like a law of physics applying to nature. Except it isn't physics. A law of nature.

Spectacularly wrong. Evolutionary theory posits a set of processes that supposedly operate in accordance with Methodological Naturalism. Methodological Naturalism only considers processes that conform with known and understood physical laws. Thus evolutionary processes are subject to laws of physics including probability and entropy.

Entropy is a measure of overall order. It applies to any kind of order. In thermodynamics it applies to the order found in discrete sets of energy microstates. In molecular systems it applies to the order found in molecular positioning and in information it is the order represented by the discrete syntactical representation of the information.

Can anyone offer an actualized example of order in this universe under influence of random processes that is not subject to the laws of probability and entropy?

If it is irrelevant why is it being discussed? Does not compute.

It is being discussed because it is relevant since all natural processes in this universe are subject to laws of physics. Evolution as framed as a natural process and thus is subject to laws including the law of entropy. The law of entropy set the direction of change in order of any kind for systems that are subjected to processes involving random action. The direction is from order to disorder, from states of low probability to higher probability. Chemical and thermodynamic systems are driven in part by Brownian motion and are thus subject to the constraints placed on them by entropy and probability considerations Many proponents of evolutionary theory prefer to ignore or at least downplay the law of entropy when considering the chemic reality of processes prescribed by the theory.

The theory states that all observed diversity is a result of evolutionary processes, but diversity in a biological sense requires new functional systems and new functional systems require massive amounts of coherent ordered chemical polymers and an information blueprint of how to make them, and manage them in order to support biological activity. Evolutionists have no scientific explanation for how molecular and information entropy was reduced to support the chemical patterns and stored information found in biological systems.

Indeed. Could you mathematically define "functional information", cypress? You stated,

 

 

 

This leaves many unanswered questions, such as "what kind of processing are we talking about?", "whose intention do you mean?", "what constitutes 'functional'?", and "can it be a functional system that performs a different function than intended?"

 

This is why information theorists use mathematical descriptions.

There are many kinds of information but regardless of the kind, information is measured as previously described. Functional information can be processed in a variety of ways. In a computerized milling machine the functional information is an instruction set that causes the milling machine to execute functions that shape the material as intended or defined by the prescribed function set. Intent is thus a descriptor I chose to indicate correspondence to a specific function.

This is why information theorists use mathematical descriptions.

Math, physics, and indeed many scientific text books include text and formulas to explain a concept. In a forum setting, I feel text is more effective.

In information theory, Information is measured in terms of the alternatives the specific eliminates therefore I = -logP When the information is syntactic and expressed as character strings in an encoded systems, a_i being a character in the applicable alphabet of n characters, I(a_i) = -log₂p_i, then entropy S = ∑p_iI(a_i). Thus entropy is maximal when all probabilities are identical.

He won't, otherwise he can't change it at his whim to fit his argument.

I answered that question several days ago.

Why are you demanding chirality be a part of the formation process, when it could be part of the selection process. You are erecting artificial barriers to exclude viable possibilities.

It's not a demand, I did not intend to imply that it was and I am sorry it came across that way. I note it because, like the probabilistic order inherent in the irregular sequences of amino acids, chiral consistency represents higher probabilistic order, and as such, is worth mention. The only demand I am making is to offer up a validated materialistic example of increased molecular order (decreased molecular and/or information entropy, either one is fine) of a system where all inputs and outputs are properly accounted. The example does not need to have consistent chirality, it does not have to be made up of amino acids or have any artificial barriers at all, any viable demonstration that is actualized is acceptable. I have suggested biological polymers primarily because they are clearer examples of the molecular and information order I describe.

Evolution is based on genetic changes that have no apparent cause. Once the effect occurs (changing DNA), it becomes the cause for the effect called selective advantage. This precess has so sense of direction, since there is no original cause.

 

Is this theory without original cause, due to lack of understanding?

Genetic error has a cause rooted in physical chemistry based on chemic affinity, reaction energy, chemic equilibrium and Brownian motion. These factors conspire to generate random variation at a regular rate. Biological processes that correct errors through use of biological information mitigate the errors so that only a few slip through. It would be incorrect to say that genetic errors have no cause.

The notion from Moontanman that having no cause is an intrinsic part of reality seems wrong as well. Cause and effect is the null hypothesis in our physical reality. I would be very interested in scientific demonstration of a real effect (an actual event with a beginning) that verifiably has no cause.

You don't consider polypetides generated by high speed impact of amino acid bearing ices to be an instance of complex, irregular polymers forming in a natural way?

I would if they were on the same scale and character as functional proteins and they persisted. Do you have any examples of long chain (100+) chiral consistent polypeptides formed and persisting?

The concept being explored is of the capability for material circumstance and physical chemical processes alone to generated highly ordered systems where order is defined from a probabilistic sense as in the order measured by entropy. Clearly short peptides of 2 or 3 amino acids can and do form in natural settings by a few mechanisms but the formation is guided by the random nature of chemical equilibrium and the deterministic physical laws, and thus the products are no more ordered than the configuration of the precursors.

Biological systems seem to defy these processes because in contrast, they contain functional information and they contain order that represents relative (molecular and information) entropy values that are substantially lower than the precursor states presumed by natural processes. Intelligence and design is one way around this dilemma which supports the topic of this thread. Thus far, there is no alternate materialistic mechanism that can account for this observation. Thermal entropy is most frequently suggested, but it is done with hand waving. No scientific demonstration is offered to show thermodynamic entropy can substitute for molecular and information entropy.

During glacial periods, permafros areas extended far further than they do today. It was the melting of these other permafros areas that was part of the feedback loop that caused the Earth to warm rapidly.

So since the permafrost first had to melt and then decompose before methane could be released, how could methane be the cause of warming or even more rapid warming since the warming had already occurred?

Actually, as we were talking information theory, and as you will be well familiar with as you have stateds that you have been a programmier for many years, that the specific hardware is not important. This ia a fact of computation. Universal Turing Machines are the core of computational and information theory. As the whole concept of Universal Turing Machines requiers the fact that hardware is irrelevent (only so long as it performs the requiered functions) for computers (like the one you are using to view this) to work. As computers clearly work, then we can conclude that the specific hardware is irrelevent when discussing computation.

 

In other words, you objection is noted and is shown to be false.

Even you noted that entropy considerations require inclusion of the entire system. Offer up the equations that demonstrate you can safely ignore part of the system.

No, this is aclaim you keep making with out providing any evidence that it is true.

You are claiming that the entropy law is not universal that it does not apply to all systems where random processes can and does alter probabilistic order. Are you really claiming that I must provide evidence that the entropy laws are true?

Also, I have shown a causal chain that links the energy emitted form the sun as a source of low entropy, and as it passes through "living" systems it can be ustilised to convert locally high entropy material (and information) into more ordered information.

No, biological systems make use of the information stored within them to replicate and function. Your challenge was to offer a valid explanation of how the information got there in the first place.

So provide evidence as to where my evidence is worng, or admit that you have nothing to base your argument on.

Your evidence is not evidence for what was requested. Much of it may be right for what you claim, but you simply change the question and answer the one that was not asked.

Life is not fundamentally different form non-life (unless you can provide objective evidence for that). It is more complex, yes, but there is no Elan Vital that has ever been measured (and it has been looked for for hundreds of years) that makes lifing systems different from non-living systems.

It is very different. Biological systems self replicate. Non biological systems do not. Biological systems contain stored information that is used to self replicate and to control development and function.

The chemical systems I provided were close enough to living system that you mistakenly though I was talking about living systems. And, the only objection you could raise against them was that I was trying to describe living systems and you could not accept that living systems could funciton like that.

Nonsense. It was quite clear that the speculations you were describing was abiogenesis. I objected because life from non-life by the process you presuppose is unverified.

If you look at my explaination, I showed that there was energy input from outside (thermal vents, or the sun) and it was this energy that was driving the system to operate. It is this lower entropy energy that is converted into higher entropy energy that allows the local reduction of entropy in the form of the molecules reproducing and arranging themsleves in orders systems.

You are describing thermodynamic entropy. I am speaking of information entropy. You are once again answering a question I did not ask. You repeat yourself because you don't answer the question asked. When will you answer the questions asked of you? When will you address the actual argument rather than some argument I am not making?

 

I plead you to make an open analysis on that before coming to any other conclusions. I have a strange feeling that you might ignore this.

 

I finished reviewing this article and others related to it. In this article they demonstrate that a several short similar and structurally dissimilar peptides that all bind to a human AIDS antibody can be altered in stepwise fashion one amino acid at a time without loss of ability to bind to the antibody.

Having now thought this through for some time, I can't draw any evolutionary conclusions from it because

1. short peptides are not selective so chemically speaking we should expect the result that was observed. This is one reason why biological proteins are much larger to obtain selectivity.

2. Development of Antibody binding sites are not an analog for evolutionary derivation of binding sites. The process is completely different.

3. The system of antibody and peptide does not form a biologically functional system so its significance in biological development is unknown.

This article was offered as a possible answer to a request for an verified evolutionary pathway of 4 or more contiguous selectable steps. Despite the 70 or so years of searching for such a pathway, none have been identified, indicating that the evolutionary narrative that all diversity is explained by evolution is not validated and alternative explanations should be considered including the ones offered in this thread.

However, there are many complex molecules that are both stable and complex.

Derivation of complex biopolymers are not explained by reference to fatty acids, which are quite simple from an organization view.

Lipid bi-layers are extremely complex and ordered and will appear to be designed, however, the processes that bind them are pure physical processes and no outside agent is necesary for them to behave like they do. Not only that, these bi-layers, because of the molecular forces (which is electromagentic forces), will curl up into spheres (called vesicles).

bi-layers of fatty acids are not molecules. As you indicate they have regular ordered structures by virtue of the determinist processes that cause them to form up that way. When order is defined from a probability theory and thus from an entropy viewpoint, deterministic processes do not increase or decrease order because only one outcome is possible. Bi-layers and crystals and such are not organizationally complex from an entropy viewpoint.

Your example is another straw man illustrations because it is not in the same context.

There are certainly many complex chemcials that are stable and have interesting behaviours (like self reproduction, self organisation, etc). Actually it is these very properties that make them stable.

Self organization is a straw man as is your lipid example. Self-replication, however, would be a good example. The only self-replicating biomolecules I am aware of are either contained in existing biological systems or are designed. It would be interesting to discuss an analog to the irregular sequenced, but specifically shaped and highly coherent biopolymers that are also unstable in the environment outside of the cell.

!

Moderator Note

Split from http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/52568-climate-skeptics-vs-climate-scientists-in-a-nutshell/page__st__40

 

I don't think it's a reasonable scenario being presented. It's very ad-hoc and looks a lot like a straw man. The thing is, we have examples we can look at in history, when air and water pollution were a problem. US corporations made the exact same kind of complaints. Somehow, the economy managed.

While Merat's scenarios seem unrealistic, equating the options and impact facing us to the pollution control improvements of the '70's and 80's seems also unrealistic. US corporations were not making the exact same kind of complaints as is being made today. Previously the arguments were around impact to individual companies or industries and regional economies. Some exaggeration occurred but by and large the consensus effects did occur. It was more expensive in the short run but productivity increases offset the impacts of pollution control. The primary cause of pollution was failure of society to define and manage public goods in the first place. Clean air and water are now much better managed.

I don't see many suggesting that global GHG management won't involve a major overhaul of industrial society, a significant shift in resource management and a redistribution of economic activity. To downplay the effort by suggesting that somehow the economy will manage seems somewhat myopic.

The problem with the delaying tactic is that the longer one waits to enact any mitigation at all, the more dramatic the effort will have to be to end up with the desired result.

Unless it turns out the desired result does not require mitigation.

So even for someone who is unconvinced, risk analysis dictates adopting some efforts.

Not necessarily. If the risk discounted uncertainty analysis indicates that doing nothing is more rational than other actions then doing nothing may be the best course of action. Since the uncertainty of future impact is not well known and more importantly since the result of attempting to make changes are also not known, we can't accurately complete this analysis. If GHG's only influence temperature by 1 degree or less then any adjustments made to curtail generation will also have only a minimal impact on global climate. We do however know that natural climate drivers have elevated temperatures by 6 degrees or so above current levels. If these kinds of temperatures are as damaging as some claim should we not instead focus on mitigating this threat? If not why not?

That, plus adopting many of these strategies have other benefits as well, such as reducing oil imports, which would promote domestic job creation and keep money in the domestic economy rather than having it add to the trade deficit.

If the alternative to oil imports are energy sources that are significantly more costly to produce then the net impact is reduction in productivity which should not be described as a benefit. Energy independence is an admirable goal if it can be accomplished without significant productivity loss,but I have not seen a rational plan that does not include significant increases in energy cost and thus productivity loss.

I agree. Look at the Miller-Urey experiment. They made a "primordial-soup" of methane, ammonia, water, and other simple binary compounds, set it up to an electric discharge and let it sit for a few weeks. After a while they discovered lipid miscelles (organized spheres of lipids), as well as complex sugars and maybe even amino-acids, if I remember correctly, that had all formed randomly in the soup. This arrival of complex molecules facilitates more complicated chemistry occurring by sheer number of possible reactions.

 

I think in the future we will come to the realization that chemical complexity [life] tends to arise out of complex chemical mixtures over time. Before life starts to compete for food and reproductive superiority, chemicals compete for free-energy and equilibrium position.

 

The laws of physics, which translate to workings of chemistry, are so that, in my opinion, life is inevitable on any body in space with enough gravity, thermal energy, some liquid/gas interface (like the ocean and air), and a steady string of photons from the nearby star. Who knows what obscure conditions life can live under though? We would've been surprised to find archaea living at the bottom of the ocean with no light, mega-pressure, and eating hydogen sulfide seventy years ago.

Physical laws acting on chemistry don't seem to work the way you imagine. As you are aware, chemical reactions are such that products that are more stable in the environment form with regularity, while those that are unstable degrade. Complex irregular polymers don't fit this pattern, instead they seem to require pre-existing complexity to generate them and continual repair mechanisms to maintain them. They don't seem to form the way less complex stable molecules form. This observation is consistent with probability theorem and entropy laws. there does not seem to be much interest in admitting physical chemistry laws and aplying them to the notion of life from non-life.

This is wrong.

 

Sure, higher entropy states are more likely, but that does not preclude that a low entropy state could not occur.

 

Take for example the string "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10"

 

You would agree with me that it is an ordered state. If we were to introduce random changes to it, say randomly swapping two positions with each other, then it is going to be unlikely that any two random swaps would reproduce the orriginal position.

 

However, if you did this long enough, you certainly would get the orriginal sequence again at some time.

 

Even if you started off with a random ordering, it will, if you did it long enough, get to a higly ordered state at some time. This is a mathematical fact, and the basis of probability. It also completly disproves your claim that an ordered system can not arise out of random actions.

It completely misses the point, and it fails to demonstrate a problem with my argument because in your example you have not described the system and processes used to manipulate the string and thus you have not described your example with sufficient detail to establish that it is materially identical to the cases I have described. As you have indicated previously, you are well aware that entropy law does not preclude a drop in entropy for a subcomponent or process but that for the system as a whole entropy remains unchanged or increases. What you do describe is consistent with the law of entropy because it presupposes a larger, but not described system, that manipulates this string, and throughout the cycle, returns it to the original state and original entropy level. You have, however, said nothing about what has happened to the entropy of these unnamed components. Offer a proper examples so we can have a proper dialog about it.

Throughout this argument, I have noted that biological systems require functional, coherent, highly ordered information in order to reproduce and function. I have also noted that generating new systems require new information. I have further noted that entropy considerations demand that increases in order at the system level does not arise spontaneously. Thus it is rational to conclude that this low entropy information must have a source external to the material feedstock for these new biological systems unless the feedstock contains this low entropy information. I have noted that thus far the proponents of evolutionary theory and abiogenesis have yet to offer a coherent logical and rational explanation for the source of this low entropy information.

You don't seem to understand this.

I understand. I understand that your descriptions are materially different than the points I am arguing. I don't dispute your points for what they argue. I dispute them for their failure to address the issues I raise.

I never called it life. I said it was evolution, but I didn't say it was life. So your argument here is not valid.

 

All I am saying is that if these chemcials come together (and they spontainiously do based on simple chemistry), then you will get evolution. It is a long way from life, and as I never called it that, either you are not readin what I wrote, or are trying to use strawman arguments again.

Call it what you like, but you are speaking of, and offered links about, the process of life from non-life. Evolution involves natural selection acting on genetic error. The chemic reactions you speculate about here do not invoke evolutionary processes.

But, those lipids, if you want to check if what I say works, you can test similar molecules that are found is soap. You can blow bubbles. Bubbles form when the molecules that make up soap form a bi-layer with water inbetween them.

The oily side of the molecules tries to get as far away form water as it can. The other side of the molecule is attracted to water and pulls a thin film of water onto it. The oily side is attracted to oily molecules and this causes the molecules to line up in a layer. However, some molecules are already lined up with the film of water, but pointing in the opposite direction, but then these too will also attract other oily molecules (the oily ends of the soap molecules) and cause these to line up on that side of the water film. This same attraction to oily molecules will also cause the soap molecules to curl around into a sphereical shape, what we see as a bubble.

The lipid molecules I was talking aobut have the same properties, they have an oily end and a hydrophilic (which means water likeing) end, the same as the soap molecules (natural soap is actually made from lipids).

 

If you want to check if the neucleotide molecules behave the same way, then you have to look no further than RNA or DNA (These are just two types of neucleotides). Neucleotides do have pair bonding, and can spontainiously polymerise, if you don't believe that then go read a chemistry text book (preferably one on organis chemistry - fyi organic chemistry is not specific to living systems but deals mainly with carbon chain molecules).

 

Lastly, all you need to do to understand this "just so" story can occur, is to understand permiability. That is: some molecules are small enough to fit between other molecules, but others can't. Larger molecules find it harder to fit through small gaps, where as smaller molecules might be able to fit through those smal gaps.

 

As polymers are joined together strings, or sheets of monomers, polymers are by their very nature larger than monomers. So, if neucleotide monomers can fit through the gaps between the lipids, then it stand to reason that at some point the neucleotide polymers will not be able to do so.

 

Experiments with these molecules shows that the neucleotide monomers only just fir through these gaps, so even small polymers of them won't be able to fit though.

 

As spontainious polymerisation with these neucleotides occur easily, then it is even more likely if they get concentrated as small polymers that they will continue to polymerise into longer chains.

 

Actually don't take my word for it, go read what Dr. Jack Szostak had done. He is a Nobel winning scientist, so he certainly knows what he is talking about. If you can find that his work violates known physical laws then you yourself could write a paper disputing his work and win yourself a Nobel prize. But I don't think you really can, you are just using strawmen and other logical falacies and not reading what it written.

Explain how this is relevant. Do any of the products described or any of the processes reduce net information entropy at the system level? do any of these products and processes demonstrably generate the biological information required to replicate? If not it is a side topic at best. I don't dispute this work, it certainly does not demonstrate life from non-life and it does not demonstrate how natural processes alone reduce net entropy so I have no issue with it at all. It is interesting but not relevant.

If you can show me where his work have factual errors and does not conform to known physical laws, I'll start believing you.

This is not my claim. Why do you insist on constructing straw man arguments? Do you find my claim too difficult to address?

Reality does not care what you think.

What is the reality? Does reality demonstrate that material only systems reduce net information entropy? If it does not then I my argument accords with reality and your just so stories including the speculative conclusions (as opposed to the facts of his studies) of Dr. Szostak do not. Your links are interesting , but they do not address the questions I am raising. The links that purport to explain fail with regard to specifics and they fail in that they are not actualized. The modest claims are not an issue, the grand claims, that they have shown how natural processes alone do reduce information entropy, that functional information is easy to generate from natural processes sound great but they cannot be properly tested. Point to a specific example, a verified case where you describe all the components and processes so we can address it in detail.

Have you got any objective means of showing that any other human has those characteristics too? You have already said that you can't objectivly determin them, so why are you asking this if you agree you can't even do it for humans?

Surveys and interviews provide an objective means of discovering the range of human characteristics for a population, and the results of these largely contradict the view promoted by AzurePhoenix. The ability for humans to communicate a broad range of ideas and concepts allows for an objective means to understand human character, but this barrier makes it impossible to use the same technique for animals. This is why AzurePhoenix is unable to provide objective measures for animals.

So, because I damage the montior sockets on my computer and can no longer see the output of the computer, then this proves that my computer has an imaterial mind.

So you didn't read the article. I think you are missing the purpose of the response also. AzurePoenix insisted there are no objective scientific studies regarding the idea of dualism and demonstrating that dualism has any support at all. These two links show that the statement is incorrect. This thread is not about dualism so I will attempt to steer clear of the topic as best I can.

This is a materialist explaination, and based on scientific (and objective) evidence. As this answers your question and only uses materialism, your conclusions that materialism can't explain subjective experience is false (and just saying it doesn't won't actually prove you right - you have to show where the evidence I have provided is wrong or how my conclusions are wrong).

As I indicated in the previous post, materialism is not a even logically coherent. Hand waving about some sort of feedback mechanism that magically leads to subjective experience is not a scientific description of any specific processes in the brain that would derive or invoke subjective experience. Your description is not scientific. If these processes were actualized as you claim, then we could reproduce them with a machine, but we can't. You set out to prove materialism but you failed. It is an opinion you hold and very little more. It is not my purpose to prove that dualism is correct, as that is a different topic. Those who claim that materialism has all the bases covered and materialists have demonstrated that the human mind and processes of the mind are no different than the brain of animals are overreaching.

We know that humans are sentient, we don't know if animals poses sapience but the empirical evidence and direct observation strongly indicates otherwise. The fact that we can clearly detect a difference, as pioneer has illustrated multiple times now seems to say it all.

Since the follow on effects can change the magnitude and even the direction of the effect so that the final outcome is not understood, then it makes sense to try to get a better handle on the total energy budget before making drastic and costly changes to society unless it is known that the benefits to the changes exceed the social cost.

Since it is now known that the earth's climate in recent history has far exceeded the 2-3 degree centigrade number the IPCC has been using, without human influences, and biological life managed through it, it seems unclear that the warnings are realistic. In the mean time until energy balances are understood, empirical studies seem to be the more sound method of estimating impact to climate. The empirical data increasingly indicates the upper limit for climate influence by increases in GHG's is about 1 degree centigrade. The lower limit is slightly negative. If we should be concerned about 3-4 degree effects and since we know that natural forces are capable of effects between +6 and -12 degrees, if planning to avoid climate change is as critical as some suggest, would it not make more sense to attempt to override these far more potent natural drivers?

Let me repeat:

I am not saying that this excess energy has to go into heating up the Earth.

In that case your argument is irrelevant.

Extensive studies focus on animal intelligence, with strong indications of self-awareness, foresight, introspective capacity, the ability to recognize that another mind has a different perspective on reality, etc.

Please provide objective measures and the calculations for each of these characteristics and then tell use what score each of the animals used in your examples receives.

All the elements of the mind mentioned above are well-defined. The concept of Free Will simply is not. There is no comparison between pioneer's nonsensical claim, and my well-defined, widely supported one.

I was looking for objective. Are they measurable, is there any criteria for establishing if a particular animal displays these characteristics? if not how can they have any objective meaning?

In what way do any of these things indicate that a completely undefined "transcendent influence" is somehow involved, as opposed to more mundane explanations? More consistent how?

These observations are more consistent with duality because they indicate the mind is distinct from body and brain. See next response.

What people? People who have presented experimental data that's passed the rigors of peer review? Has anyone yet even offered up an alternative explanation? Such as a coherent hypothesis even remotely related to the vaguely undefined premise you repeatedly bandy about? I seriously, absolutely would love to see one. No sarcasm, it'd be just about the most interesting thing ever.

In your synthesis 1) There will be no mental phenomena without brain function. 2) As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered. 3) If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged. 4) brain development will correlate with mental development. 5) brain activity will always correlate with mental activity

Whereas dualism predicts: 1) There will be some mental phenomena without brain function 2) As brain function is altered, the mind will not necessarily be altered 3) If the brain is damaged, then mental function will not necessarily be damaged 4) Brain development will not necessarily correlate with mental development 5) We will not always be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity

In this article several of the dualist predictions are confirmed while predictions from your synthesis is contradicted.

Owen's study indicates that normal consciousness is present in some patients who have met the clinical criteria for persistent vegetative state, which is defined as a state lacking consciousness. The study shows that methods of assessing brain state and function (e.g., MRI, EEG, clinical examination, fMRI) can differ profoundly in their assessment of consciousness. Resulting in very different conclusions. And it demonstrates that an indirect assessment of brain function (fMRI, which measures regional blood flow and brain metabolism), may reveal evidence for consciousness when more direct methods (clinical examination, EEG) fail to detect consciousness.

Benjamin Libet, a neurophysiologist at UCSF one of the first in the scientific study of the relationship between the brain and the mind.

Neuroscientist Jeffery Schwartz, has shown there is substantial evidence that mental changes can induce measurable changes in brain function. I made reference to this work previously.

Why pick one soul myth over the other?

No reason to single out a myth out as an explanation. It is sufficient to note the research that indicates dualism is a more parsimonious explanation for observed behavior than materialism.

The materialistic description of the mind isn't even logically coherent. The most salient characteristics of the mind

1) free will

2) intentionality

3) quality of consciousness

4) continuity of self in time

5) restricted access

6) incorrigibility

7) unity of consciousness

are not properties of matter. There are good philosophical and logical reasons to reject idea that the mind is only material or that the mind is caused entirely by matter. Materialist theories of the mind haven't even reached logical coherence, or empirical validation.

Yes... I think it's very clear that the feelings that drive any creature's moral behaviors are the result of programming, just as our own are, whether through inherent biological instinct or upbringing/experience (including the effects of intellectual consideration). I do grant you, we are certainly distinct in the sense that we have the capacity to examine ourselves and other subjects with a level of complexity even the other self-aware, introspection-capable species lack. But those differences are only a matter degree, not novel traits unique to humans, and the same variation clearly occurs even between human individuals.

The relevant question is: Can the brain cause mind? Can the brain cause subjective experience? What in physical scientific description of the brain and brain function invokes subjectivity? The answer is nothing, and thus the materialist theory fails as logic.

But Cypress, many known chemical processes are very disfavored by entropy. For example the renaturation of a protein. The charges line up in the correct fashion to form coulombic salt bridges, the hydrophobic alkyl chains point inward to minimize repulsive interaction with water. All these effects make the net enthalpy favorable enough to completely counter the entropy term. So a huge unordered "random" polypeptide coil can arrange itself in an extremely specific fashion almost completely on thermodynamic grounds alone. This is thermodynamically spontaneous as well. Sometimes it only requires a slightly oxidative environment which is reasonable in nature. Entropy derived straight from statistical mechanics doesn't account for the possibility of conditions being favorable for an entropically disfavored process to occur.

All of these examples make use of additional low entropy inputs and/or high entropy outputs to make net entropy zero or positive. In all cases system wide entropy increases. If you disagree I would be interested in the formulas, calculations and results of one example where you suggest net entropy change is negative.

The idealized reversible carnot thermodynamic cycle involves one step where the system expels heat while contracting to maintain constant temperature and thus the system entropy is reduced while the surroundings entropy increases by gaining heat and volume but then during the heat input cycle the system gains heat, gains volume and gains entropy while temperature is constant so that the environment then looses an equal quantity of entropy and heat and volume.

What you describe are individual steps of the process but not the entire system plus surrounding in a cycle.

Can you mathematically and rigorously define "functional information" for us?

For this discussion, information is a objective description of state or outcome. It is not the state or outcome itself, rather it is a description of it. The quantity of information is measured by of alternatives eliminated, thus I = -log(Pw) where w is the set of applicable described states or outcomes and Pw is the probability of that set of states or outcomes having occurred. Thus the more specific and precise the description the higher the quantity of information. Functional information is a description that when interpreted and processed as intended, the outcome is a functional system. Some computer programs are examples of functional information. DNA is an example of functional information.

Yes your previous method for A was fine. I am sorry I was not more clear about your part A. Only part B required a different approach due to the problem statement.