Tuesday 19 January 2016
Civil War IV
PZ Myers on Royal Society “rethink evolution” meet:
January 19, 2016 Posted by News under Evolution, Darwinism
But that’s not how science works.”
From his blog Pharyngula,
Larry Moran is attending — not as a representative of the crackpot contingent, but, I suspect, to cast a cynical eye on the shenanigans. The Third Way of Evolution gang seems to be excited about the meeting, which is not a good sign — these are people who have taken some useful ideas in evolutionary theory, like epigenetics and niche construction, and turned the dial up to 11 to argue that these concepts are so revolutionary that they demand a complete upheaval of neo-Darwinian thinking.
Many evidence-based concepts do demand it, actually.
What’s changed is this: Darwinism (natural selection acting on random mutation) was once a default explanation of change in life forms over time. Now it competes with a variety of evidence-based explanations. The question is, which one or combination best explains the pattern we see in a given case?
From a lay perspective, it is somewhat like this: We grew up with Big Phone, Inc.’s monopoly on communications (cross them, and your best bet is smoke signals on a windless hill).
Then we moved, and found ourselves in a region where five different phone companies’ signals are carried through the wires and towers. So which one is best for a given situation? We must think about that.
Meanwhile, Big Phone is shrieking from the sidelines that all this chaos is a disaster. Mainly, it appears, for Big Phone. Most communicators have never been more connected than now, for better or worse. But back to Myers:
… And, unfortunately, I’ve just learned that the Queen of Hyperbolic Revolutionary Evolution, Susan Mazur, Journalistic Flibbertigibbent, is all wound up about it, which is also not a good sign. She’s raving about Paradigm-Shifters who will come up with a replacement for the modern synthesis.
The correct term and pronunciation is “flibbertigibbet,” Dr. Myers.Flibbertigibbets like Mazur are what happens to people who are tone deaf.
As we mentioned in connection with University of Toronto’s Larry Moran a couple months back,
Moran also misses the point about interviewer Suzan Mazur, of whom he says dismissive things. When journalists who publish in key venues become interested in an otherwise obscure train wreck, we can reasonably suspect that a shift is taking place. That’s why we call it “news” and not “olds.”
Myers also shares this insight:
Mazur clearly has no idea at all how science works. Twenty people attending a meeting don’t get to suddenly declare that a theory is replaced, and I don’t care who they are. More.
Yes, maybe twenty is too many. Even one person can replace a big theory, even some guy standing at an obscure lectern in a patent office in Switzerland in the early 1900s…
But we will assume that the organizers are correct in thinking that twenty is a reasonable number in this case.
See also: So who’s in and who’s out at Royal Society 2016 “rethink evolution” meet?
and
Progressive Review hopes for post-Darwinian science “But Darwin clearly didn’t have all the answers, and science has moved many miles since his time.”
January 19, 2016 Posted by News under Evolution, Darwinism
But that’s not how science works.”
From his blog Pharyngula,
Larry Moran is attending — not as a representative of the crackpot contingent, but, I suspect, to cast a cynical eye on the shenanigans. The Third Way of Evolution gang seems to be excited about the meeting, which is not a good sign — these are people who have taken some useful ideas in evolutionary theory, like epigenetics and niche construction, and turned the dial up to 11 to argue that these concepts are so revolutionary that they demand a complete upheaval of neo-Darwinian thinking.
Many evidence-based concepts do demand it, actually.
What’s changed is this: Darwinism (natural selection acting on random mutation) was once a default explanation of change in life forms over time. Now it competes with a variety of evidence-based explanations. The question is, which one or combination best explains the pattern we see in a given case?
From a lay perspective, it is somewhat like this: We grew up with Big Phone, Inc.’s monopoly on communications (cross them, and your best bet is smoke signals on a windless hill).
Then we moved, and found ourselves in a region where five different phone companies’ signals are carried through the wires and towers. So which one is best for a given situation? We must think about that.
Meanwhile, Big Phone is shrieking from the sidelines that all this chaos is a disaster. Mainly, it appears, for Big Phone. Most communicators have never been more connected than now, for better or worse. But back to Myers:
… And, unfortunately, I’ve just learned that the Queen of Hyperbolic Revolutionary Evolution, Susan Mazur, Journalistic Flibbertigibbent, is all wound up about it, which is also not a good sign. She’s raving about Paradigm-Shifters who will come up with a replacement for the modern synthesis.
The correct term and pronunciation is “flibbertigibbet,” Dr. Myers.Flibbertigibbets like Mazur are what happens to people who are tone deaf.
As we mentioned in connection with University of Toronto’s Larry Moran a couple months back,
Moran also misses the point about interviewer Suzan Mazur, of whom he says dismissive things. When journalists who publish in key venues become interested in an otherwise obscure train wreck, we can reasonably suspect that a shift is taking place. That’s why we call it “news” and not “olds.”
Myers also shares this insight:
Mazur clearly has no idea at all how science works. Twenty people attending a meeting don’t get to suddenly declare that a theory is replaced, and I don’t care who they are. More.
Yes, maybe twenty is too many. Even one person can replace a big theory, even some guy standing at an obscure lectern in a patent office in Switzerland in the early 1900s…
But we will assume that the organizers are correct in thinking that twenty is a reasonable number in this case.
See also: So who’s in and who’s out at Royal Society 2016 “rethink evolution” meet?
and
Progressive Review hopes for post-Darwinian science “But Darwin clearly didn’t have all the answers, and science has moved many miles since his time.”
On formalising design detection III
Back to Basics: Understanding the Design Inference:
January 18, 2016 Posted by Eric Anderson under Intelligent Design, Design inference, Darwinist rhetorical tactics, Darwinian Debating Devices, Back to Basics of ID
This is prompted primarily by a recent post and by the unfortunate realization that some people still do not understand the design inference, despite years of involvement in the debate. Specifically, there was discussion at Barry’s prior post about whether Elizabeth Liddle admits that “biological design inferences” may be valid in principle. Over 200 comments appeared on the prior thread, including a fair amount of back and forth between Barry, Elizabeth and me, all of which may be worth reviewing for those who are interested.
However, the primary takeaway from that thread is that we need another back-to-basics primer on intelligent design – specifically, what the design inference is and how it works. Yes, I know regular readers have a great deal of exposure to this topic. And I know that many of you have an excellent grasp of the design inference. But please stay with me to the end and I trust this post will shed some additional light and provide perhaps some additional nuances on the issues. Perhaps less in terms of providing you with additional insight and more in terms of understanding the rhetorical tools and mindset of intelligent design opponents (or proponents who may have misunderstood some basic issues).
With that need clearly established from the prior thread and a more recent thread, I have finally taken a deep breath, gathered my courage, and set aside many hours to put this together. (Yes, that is the amount of time it takes to carefully analyze, lay out, and properly articulate an issue like this. Unfortunately, the quick one-liner complaints and dismissals are much more facile to post.) I apologize in advance for the length, as I dislike lengthy head posts in general, but there are some key issues here that need to be fleshed out in detail.
Background
We hear from time to time, as in the two threads I cite above, claims essentially equivalent to the following:
“The design inference is a valid mode of inquiry in principle, but it cannot be applied to biological systems.”
or
“The design inference only works with human artifacts and cannot be applied to life because we have never seen a designer of life.”
or
“It is possible to detect design in theory, but it cannot be applied without knowing characteristics of the designer.”
or, this zinger:
“Design detection works with some phenomena, but life is ‘too complex to have been designed.’”
It is claims like these I wish to address. For present purposes and to keep this to some merciful length, I am setting aside issues about whether ID is science, whether ID is falsifiable, whether ID has a positive case, whether ID is directly testable, and so on. Our present purpose is to examine specifically the situation in which an individual asserts that (a) the design inference has some application, but (b) it cannot be applied to biological systems or to non-human designers.
How Can We Determine Design?
There are a couple of approaches to determining whether something is designed.* These can be broken into two broad categories: namely, actual knowledge and inference.
In the first category, we have actual knowledge of the artifact being designed. In this situation we see or experience as directly as possible a creative event – something being designed. All of us have experience with this: we have created or built something with our own hands, or have worked on a schematic, or have written lines of code. In such cases we have direct, actual knowledge that the artifact in question was designed. We can also include in this category creative events that we witness directly.** No-one disputes these examples and there is no need to infer anything when we have actual knowledge. We need not discuss this category further.
In the second category, we don’t have actual knowledge of the artifact being designed. Rather, we infer it was designed by examining indirect evidence after the fact. These pieces of indirect evidence can be legion. Indeed, in some cases they can seem so many and so obvious that we are tempted to think we have “actual knowledge” of the design. However, on closer inspection we realize we are really drawing an inference.Was the iPhone designed? Of course, you say, only a fool would think otherwise. Fair enough, but why are you so sure it was designed? Did you personally design it? Did you actually witness someone else design it? Even if you personally worked on a couple of the parts, how do you know the rest of the iPhone was designed?
Make no mistake, the fact that Apple claims it was designed, or that Apple sells it, or that no-one questions it was designed, or that patents were filed, or that you have actual personal knowledge of some similar system being designed – none of these things shifts the iPhone into the category of “Actual Knowledge.” No, when we say the iPhone was designed we are still drawing an inference. A correct one, undoubtedly, but still an inference.
And what is it that gives us such confidence the iPhone was designed?
There are many possible pieces of indirect evidence that could bolster our claim that the iPhone was designed. A key list might include: (a) perhaps we know an Apple engineer who claims actual knowledge of its design; (b) there were lots of engineers around at the time who could have been available to work on it; (c) perhaps we know of some similar system that was designed; (d) the iPhone contains multiple components that have been brought together into a greater functional whole; and (e) to our knowledge there is no natural event or other non-design process that can produce something like an iPhone.
Excellent. So we are pretty confident the iPhone was designed. Confident enough that we would stake a great deal on it. And we can draw the same conclusion for millions upon millions of other human inventions. But it is still an inference.
Let’s up the ante a bit. What about something like Stonehenge? Let’s go through the same list:
(a) We know an engineer who actually worked on Stonehenge? No. But how cool would that be!
(b) Lots of engineers around at the time? This one is more tricky and deserves some discussion.
We don’t know if there were lots of engineers, but, we might argue, perhaps a small handful, or even one, would suffice. On the other hand, do we have actual knowledge that there was even one engineer capable of designing Stonehenge around at the time? No. We do not.
We have corroborating evidence (bone fragments, burial mounds, and the like) that there were humans around at the time. So we can infer that there was a designer around at the time. But we have no evidence – none at all – outside of Stonehenge itself, that there was a designer around at the time capable of producing Stonehenge. Indeed, it is the very existence of Stonehenge itself, coupled with our conclusion that Stonehenge was designed, which gives us the following piece of information and allows us to draw the following conclusion: there was a designer around at the time capable of designing Stonehenge. This is the way it always works, whether we are talking about some newly-discovered structure, a previously-unknown manuscript, or otherwise.
It is absolutely critical to understand this point: In archaeological and other investigations of the past, we do not infer that an artifact was designed because we have knowledge of a designer capable of producing the artifact. Rather, we infer there was a designer capable of producing the artifact, because we have found the artifact and concluded that it was designed.
Do not get this backwards. Doing so is a failure of logic at the most basic level and a failure to understand the process of investigation.
Let me briefly add one last related point here. Stonehenge is a somewhat simple case (though perhaps a more confusing case to those who aren’t thinking through the chain of logic clearly), because there is much corroborating evidence in the Stonehenge area for the existence of humans. However, there are many other examples in archaeology where independent evidence of whether designers were around is absent. In those cases, the chain of logic works precisely the same way it always does: we eventually infer that there were capable designers around, because we have found an artifact and concluded that it was designed.
(c) Actual knowledge of a similar system being designed? Perhaps.
This turns on how “similar” something needs to be. Stonehenge, by many accounts, is a fantastic, singular monument. And, no, we cannot rely on the fact that lots of other henges have been found in the surrounding area – we don’t have any actual knowledge about their design either and must draw an inference just the same. So we might have actual knowledge of some stones being cut and placed generally, but we really have no actual knowledge of something highly similar to Stonehenge being produced.
Nevertheless, under this particular criterion we might reasonably conclude that we know of designed systems which at least contain analogous characteristics or which have a number of similarities to aspects of Stonehenge.
(Incidentally, there are some interesting documentaries on recent work done at Stonehenge with cutting-edge mapping technologies. The area turns out to contain an entire massive complex of henges and other structures, not just a single henge. Well worth checking out.)
(d) Stonehenge contains multiple components that have been brought together into a greater functional whole? Definitely.
(e) To our knowledge there is no natural process or event that could produce Stonehenge. Correct.
So, to review, why are we so utterly, completely, unabashedly confident that Stonehenge was designed? Is it because we have actual knowledge and were there at the time to witness it? Is it because we know someone who claims to have worked on it? No and no.
Is it because we know there were engineers around at the time who were capable of producing Stonehenge? No. Quite the opposite: it is our conclusion of design that allows us to infer there were engineers at the time capable of producing Stonehenge.
Is it because we have actual knowledge of similar systems being designed? Perhaps, turning a bit on how we define “similar.” Is it because it contains multiple components that have been brought together into a greater functional whole. Yes. Is it, in part, because to our knowledge there is no natural process that could reasonably produce Stonehenge? Yes.
How the Inference Runs
Take another close look at the above. There is a fundamental point here that seems lost on some critics of the design inference and which is absolutely critical: We infer that Stonehenge was designed not, as sometimes claimed by design critics, because we know there were designers around at the time capable of producing the artifact in question, but because of the characteristics of the artifact itself.
Then, having concluded the artifact was designed, we can infer that there were designers around at the time capable of producing the artifact. This is the directional arrow of the logic. This is the way the design inference works. This is the way it always works.
Furthermore, let us note for completeness that the arrow of reasoning can never run in the opposite direction. Even if we know for certain that a designer exists in the right time and place, and even if we know for certain that the designer has the capability of designing, we still cannot conclude, based simply on those facts, that an artifact was designed. After all, there is no requirement that a designer actually produce anything. The designer may have existed; the designer may have been capable. But the only way we know that the designer actually designed the artifact in question is by examining the artifact itself.
The inference simply cannot operate any other way.
What is so often happening in the design critic’s mind, the essentially philosophical stance being taken, is that design can only be considered in certain circumstances. Not that the artifact doesn’t need to be examined on its own merits. It does. Not that we need to have independent evidence of the designers and their characteristics beforehand. We don’t. The design inference works across the spectrum. In can be applied just fine. It is just that the critic is unwilling to apply the design inference in certain unpalatable circumstances.
Is Life is Too Complex to Be Designed?
Let us now turn to a particularly remarkable stance taken by Elizabeth Liddle on the prior thread. I refer to Elizabeth only because it is a convenient example and because it also highlights some of the mistakes made by critics of intelligent design generally. Specifically, although she claimed willingness to consider design in the case of human ingenuity, when it comes to biology she says, “I think [life] is too complex to have been designed.”
Let that sink in for a moment.
How could someone say that and what could it possibly mean? In the context of the design inference, we are looking for indicia of design as we examine an artifact: complex specified information, irreducibly complex functional structures, and so on. What does it mean to claim that we can infer some simpler things are designed, but that life is “too complex” to have been designed? (Please don’t get hung up on the fact that Elizabeth misuses the term “complex.” She is essentially talking about indicia of design, otherwise her whole statement is meaningless.)
Essentially, she is arguing that there are certain indicia of design we can look to, but when there are too many, then we cannot infer design because it is too much. Here is how it looks graphically:
The first column is easy and makes sense; the second is fine as well.
It scarcely bears mentioning that the conclusion in the last column is nonsensical. Blatantly inconsistent. Utterly irrational and illogical. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how anyone could be so completely off track as to even countenance such a viewpoint. We might be tempted to conclude that such an individual can only be either (1) incapable of rational thought, or (2) purposely deceptive.
At least in the context of the design inference.
A Third Way
But is there another way to think about a conclusion of design? Is there a third possibility that might explain how someone could take the view that some indicia of design = design while even more indicia of design = non-design? There is indeed another way of looking at it, and this is precisely what is happening with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, as she has made clear, does not believe it is possible to infer design without knowing about the designer’s existence and something about the designer’s capabilities. For those intrepid souls who have stayed with me to this point, you know this is wrong, and demonstrably so, as has already been shown above. Nevertheless, let’s run with it for a moment to see if we can at least identify the chain of thought that leads to this remarkable “too complex to be designed” idea.
If one mistakenly thinks that we have to know that (a) a designer exists and (b) the designer is capable of producing the artifact in question, then it follows that we cannot infer life was designed. After all, the argument goes, we do not have direct independent evidence that a designer existed at the time nor that the designer was capable of producing the artifact in question. Thus, even though life is teeming with indicia of design, even though life is “too complex” compared with other things Elizabeth believes are designed, she is unwilling to infer design because she doesn’t have independent evidence about the designer and the designer’s capabilities.
She unfortunately fails, as do so many others, to realize that the exact same situation applies to almost every other inference of design – certainly to artifacts from the remote past, whether Stonehenge or otherwise. So her attempt to identify design is, at best, poorly thought through and inconsistently applied.
The Demand for Evidence Beyond the Artifact
Elizabeth says, regarding her conclusion that life was not designed:
But were evidence to arise, say, of optimised solutions from one lineage being transferred to another (as we install cameras in phones), or of evidence of artefactual fabrication, or of the presence of designers on early earth, or possibly something I haven’t thought of that indicated that living things were designed, I might have to think again.
Note the part I have highlighted in bold. This is the crux of the matter. She is looking for actual evidence of design – or at least a version of actual evidence she is willing to accept. In other words, if we find independent evidence to our liking that something was designed then we will acknowledge it was designed.
This is not to say that Elizabeth never infers design. She clearly does. But she reserves her willingness to infer design to those cases in which there is some other reason, something other than the characteristics of the artifact in question, to conclude the artifact may have been designed. Let’s say she concludes artifact x, such as Stonehenge, is designed. We might do well to ask how she could come to that conclusion in the case of artifact x, but not in the case of living systems.
The answer is rather simple. Perhaps she feels artifact x is closer in time to other things that are known to be designed; perhaps she feels that artifact x is more “similar” to things known to be designed; perhaps she just has a difficult time accepting the idea that a designer could be capable of designing living systems (remember, she thinks they are “too complex”); perhaps it is the pedestrian (but rapidly weakening) observation that no designer she knows of has yet designed a complex living system. Fine. As with the iPhone, we can infer design based on a number of criteria, apart from the characteristics of the artifact itself.
But that is not what the design inference is about. The design inference is precisely about identifying design from the artifact itself in the absence of additional evidence, in particular evidence about the existence or capabilities of the designer. Furthermore, as pointed out above, absent actual knowledge of design we must always fall back to an analysis of the artifact in question. Thus, any inference that relies only on other evidence will never be as solid or as robust as an inference based on the characteristics of the artifact itself.
Whatever the case, Elizabeth is clearly not willing to accept the design inference,*** despite any statements that could be understood as such. The most that can be said for Elizabeth’s approach is that in certain cases she is willing to make a design inference. Just not the design inference relevant for purposes of intelligent design. Her approach is not based on an examination of the artifact to find complex specified information, for example. Rather, it is a vague, ill-defined, “I need to see some additional corroborating evidence beyond the artifact that looks good to me” type of approach.
To be sure, one might indeed infer design with reference to other pieces of evidence beyond the artifact itself, or with reference to some poorly-defined “similar” system or some independent corroboration that designers were around at the time or some other piece of evidence that is palatable or seems subjectively good enough. But such an approach (i) does not constitute the design inference for purposes of intelligent design, and (ii) is embarrassingly poorly-defined and terribly inconsistent in application and practice.
Here we come face to face with the irony of the situation. The oft-repeated allegations that the design inference is poorly defined or difficult to apply are multiplied by orders of magnitude when the magnifying lens of critical thinking is turned on the inconsistent, poorly-defined approach of those individuals wont to claim that design can only be discerned in this field of study but not that, or in this time and place but not that, or with this type of designer but not that.
Conclusion
Despite continued criticisms of the design inference, upon closer examination the arguments of critics fail to meet the tests of objectivity, logic, and practical application. The design inference, properly understood, continues as an extremely reliable and robust, and in some cases our only, avenue to determine design.
Absent actual knowledge, which rarely, and in the case of historical events and artifacts almost never, exists, an inference to design always turns on an examination of the artifact in question. This is true with Stonehenge and other ancient artifacts just as much as with living systems. Assertions that we must have independent knowledge about the existence or characteristics of a designer before design can be inferred are misguided and demonstrate a basic lack of understanding of both how the design inference works and the direction of reasoning in investigation.
In addition, willingness to apply the design inference to only a particular field, or only a particular timeframe, or only a particular kind of designer bespeaks a fundamental confusion of the issues and, too often, an unspoken philosophical bias.
—–
* To nip a common red herring in the bud, we are talking about actual design, as commonly understood, by an intelligent being. Please, for the sake of rational discourse and for clarity of discussion in this thread, do not twist words and make claims about “nature designing” or something being “designed by a natural process” or similar nonsense. That is not what design means in the context of intelligent design and it is not what this thread is about.
** To nip the next red herring in the bud, we do not need to get into an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin discussion about what reality is, whether we can trust our senses, whether what we see is actually real. Such philosophical musings, interesting as they may be, are completely irrelevant to the present discussion and are not what this thread is about.
*** There is another important reason for Elizabeth’s unwillingness to accept the design inference, but that will have to wait for a subsequent post.
Bear with me for a moment while we dive into some examples that I think will be very helpful in elucidating the issues. Two specific examples will suffice.
January 18, 2016 Posted by Eric Anderson under Intelligent Design, Design inference, Darwinist rhetorical tactics, Darwinian Debating Devices, Back to Basics of ID
This is prompted primarily by a recent post and by the unfortunate realization that some people still do not understand the design inference, despite years of involvement in the debate. Specifically, there was discussion at Barry’s prior post about whether Elizabeth Liddle admits that “biological design inferences” may be valid in principle. Over 200 comments appeared on the prior thread, including a fair amount of back and forth between Barry, Elizabeth and me, all of which may be worth reviewing for those who are interested.
However, the primary takeaway from that thread is that we need another back-to-basics primer on intelligent design – specifically, what the design inference is and how it works. Yes, I know regular readers have a great deal of exposure to this topic. And I know that many of you have an excellent grasp of the design inference. But please stay with me to the end and I trust this post will shed some additional light and provide perhaps some additional nuances on the issues. Perhaps less in terms of providing you with additional insight and more in terms of understanding the rhetorical tools and mindset of intelligent design opponents (or proponents who may have misunderstood some basic issues).
With that need clearly established from the prior thread and a more recent thread, I have finally taken a deep breath, gathered my courage, and set aside many hours to put this together. (Yes, that is the amount of time it takes to carefully analyze, lay out, and properly articulate an issue like this. Unfortunately, the quick one-liner complaints and dismissals are much more facile to post.) I apologize in advance for the length, as I dislike lengthy head posts in general, but there are some key issues here that need to be fleshed out in detail.
Background
We hear from time to time, as in the two threads I cite above, claims essentially equivalent to the following:
“The design inference is a valid mode of inquiry in principle, but it cannot be applied to biological systems.”
or
“The design inference only works with human artifacts and cannot be applied to life because we have never seen a designer of life.”
or
“It is possible to detect design in theory, but it cannot be applied without knowing characteristics of the designer.”
or, this zinger:
“Design detection works with some phenomena, but life is ‘too complex to have been designed.’”
It is claims like these I wish to address. For present purposes and to keep this to some merciful length, I am setting aside issues about whether ID is science, whether ID is falsifiable, whether ID has a positive case, whether ID is directly testable, and so on. Our present purpose is to examine specifically the situation in which an individual asserts that (a) the design inference has some application, but (b) it cannot be applied to biological systems or to non-human designers.
How Can We Determine Design?
There are a couple of approaches to determining whether something is designed.* These can be broken into two broad categories: namely, actual knowledge and inference.
In the first category, we have actual knowledge of the artifact being designed. In this situation we see or experience as directly as possible a creative event – something being designed. All of us have experience with this: we have created or built something with our own hands, or have worked on a schematic, or have written lines of code. In such cases we have direct, actual knowledge that the artifact in question was designed. We can also include in this category creative events that we witness directly.** No-one disputes these examples and there is no need to infer anything when we have actual knowledge. We need not discuss this category further.
In the second category, we don’t have actual knowledge of the artifact being designed. Rather, we infer it was designed by examining indirect evidence after the fact. These pieces of indirect evidence can be legion. Indeed, in some cases they can seem so many and so obvious that we are tempted to think we have “actual knowledge” of the design. However, on closer inspection we realize we are really drawing an inference.Was the iPhone designed? Of course, you say, only a fool would think otherwise. Fair enough, but why are you so sure it was designed? Did you personally design it? Did you actually witness someone else design it? Even if you personally worked on a couple of the parts, how do you know the rest of the iPhone was designed?
Make no mistake, the fact that Apple claims it was designed, or that Apple sells it, or that no-one questions it was designed, or that patents were filed, or that you have actual personal knowledge of some similar system being designed – none of these things shifts the iPhone into the category of “Actual Knowledge.” No, when we say the iPhone was designed we are still drawing an inference. A correct one, undoubtedly, but still an inference.
And what is it that gives us such confidence the iPhone was designed?
There are many possible pieces of indirect evidence that could bolster our claim that the iPhone was designed. A key list might include: (a) perhaps we know an Apple engineer who claims actual knowledge of its design; (b) there were lots of engineers around at the time who could have been available to work on it; (c) perhaps we know of some similar system that was designed; (d) the iPhone contains multiple components that have been brought together into a greater functional whole; and (e) to our knowledge there is no natural event or other non-design process that can produce something like an iPhone.
Excellent. So we are pretty confident the iPhone was designed. Confident enough that we would stake a great deal on it. And we can draw the same conclusion for millions upon millions of other human inventions. But it is still an inference.
Let’s up the ante a bit. What about something like Stonehenge? Let’s go through the same list:
(a) We know an engineer who actually worked on Stonehenge? No. But how cool would that be!
(b) Lots of engineers around at the time? This one is more tricky and deserves some discussion.
We don’t know if there were lots of engineers, but, we might argue, perhaps a small handful, or even one, would suffice. On the other hand, do we have actual knowledge that there was even one engineer capable of designing Stonehenge around at the time? No. We do not.
We have corroborating evidence (bone fragments, burial mounds, and the like) that there were humans around at the time. So we can infer that there was a designer around at the time. But we have no evidence – none at all – outside of Stonehenge itself, that there was a designer around at the time capable of producing Stonehenge. Indeed, it is the very existence of Stonehenge itself, coupled with our conclusion that Stonehenge was designed, which gives us the following piece of information and allows us to draw the following conclusion: there was a designer around at the time capable of designing Stonehenge. This is the way it always works, whether we are talking about some newly-discovered structure, a previously-unknown manuscript, or otherwise.
It is absolutely critical to understand this point: In archaeological and other investigations of the past, we do not infer that an artifact was designed because we have knowledge of a designer capable of producing the artifact. Rather, we infer there was a designer capable of producing the artifact, because we have found the artifact and concluded that it was designed.
Do not get this backwards. Doing so is a failure of logic at the most basic level and a failure to understand the process of investigation.
Let me briefly add one last related point here. Stonehenge is a somewhat simple case (though perhaps a more confusing case to those who aren’t thinking through the chain of logic clearly), because there is much corroborating evidence in the Stonehenge area for the existence of humans. However, there are many other examples in archaeology where independent evidence of whether designers were around is absent. In those cases, the chain of logic works precisely the same way it always does: we eventually infer that there were capable designers around, because we have found an artifact and concluded that it was designed.
(c) Actual knowledge of a similar system being designed? Perhaps.
This turns on how “similar” something needs to be. Stonehenge, by many accounts, is a fantastic, singular monument. And, no, we cannot rely on the fact that lots of other henges have been found in the surrounding area – we don’t have any actual knowledge about their design either and must draw an inference just the same. So we might have actual knowledge of some stones being cut and placed generally, but we really have no actual knowledge of something highly similar to Stonehenge being produced.
Nevertheless, under this particular criterion we might reasonably conclude that we know of designed systems which at least contain analogous characteristics or which have a number of similarities to aspects of Stonehenge.
(Incidentally, there are some interesting documentaries on recent work done at Stonehenge with cutting-edge mapping technologies. The area turns out to contain an entire massive complex of henges and other structures, not just a single henge. Well worth checking out.)
(d) Stonehenge contains multiple components that have been brought together into a greater functional whole? Definitely.
(e) To our knowledge there is no natural process or event that could produce Stonehenge. Correct.
So, to review, why are we so utterly, completely, unabashedly confident that Stonehenge was designed? Is it because we have actual knowledge and were there at the time to witness it? Is it because we know someone who claims to have worked on it? No and no.
Is it because we know there were engineers around at the time who were capable of producing Stonehenge? No. Quite the opposite: it is our conclusion of design that allows us to infer there were engineers at the time capable of producing Stonehenge.
Is it because we have actual knowledge of similar systems being designed? Perhaps, turning a bit on how we define “similar.” Is it because it contains multiple components that have been brought together into a greater functional whole. Yes. Is it, in part, because to our knowledge there is no natural process that could reasonably produce Stonehenge? Yes.
How the Inference Runs
Take another close look at the above. There is a fundamental point here that seems lost on some critics of the design inference and which is absolutely critical: We infer that Stonehenge was designed not, as sometimes claimed by design critics, because we know there were designers around at the time capable of producing the artifact in question, but because of the characteristics of the artifact itself.
Then, having concluded the artifact was designed, we can infer that there were designers around at the time capable of producing the artifact. This is the directional arrow of the logic. This is the way the design inference works. This is the way it always works.
Furthermore, let us note for completeness that the arrow of reasoning can never run in the opposite direction. Even if we know for certain that a designer exists in the right time and place, and even if we know for certain that the designer has the capability of designing, we still cannot conclude, based simply on those facts, that an artifact was designed. After all, there is no requirement that a designer actually produce anything. The designer may have existed; the designer may have been capable. But the only way we know that the designer actually designed the artifact in question is by examining the artifact itself.
The inference simply cannot operate any other way.
What is so often happening in the design critic’s mind, the essentially philosophical stance being taken, is that design can only be considered in certain circumstances. Not that the artifact doesn’t need to be examined on its own merits. It does. Not that we need to have independent evidence of the designers and their characteristics beforehand. We don’t. The design inference works across the spectrum. In can be applied just fine. It is just that the critic is unwilling to apply the design inference in certain unpalatable circumstances.
Is Life is Too Complex to Be Designed?
Let us now turn to a particularly remarkable stance taken by Elizabeth Liddle on the prior thread. I refer to Elizabeth only because it is a convenient example and because it also highlights some of the mistakes made by critics of intelligent design generally. Specifically, although she claimed willingness to consider design in the case of human ingenuity, when it comes to biology she says, “I think [life] is too complex to have been designed.”
Let that sink in for a moment.
How could someone say that and what could it possibly mean? In the context of the design inference, we are looking for indicia of design as we examine an artifact: complex specified information, irreducibly complex functional structures, and so on. What does it mean to claim that we can infer some simpler things are designed, but that life is “too complex” to have been designed? (Please don’t get hung up on the fact that Elizabeth misuses the term “complex.” She is essentially talking about indicia of design, otherwise her whole statement is meaningless.)
Essentially, she is arguing that there are certain indicia of design we can look to, but when there are too many, then we cannot infer design because it is too much. Here is how it looks graphically:
The first column is easy and makes sense; the second is fine as well.
It scarcely bears mentioning that the conclusion in the last column is nonsensical. Blatantly inconsistent. Utterly irrational and illogical. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how anyone could be so completely off track as to even countenance such a viewpoint. We might be tempted to conclude that such an individual can only be either (1) incapable of rational thought, or (2) purposely deceptive.
At least in the context of the design inference.
A Third Way
But is there another way to think about a conclusion of design? Is there a third possibility that might explain how someone could take the view that some indicia of design = design while even more indicia of design = non-design? There is indeed another way of looking at it, and this is precisely what is happening with Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, as she has made clear, does not believe it is possible to infer design without knowing about the designer’s existence and something about the designer’s capabilities. For those intrepid souls who have stayed with me to this point, you know this is wrong, and demonstrably so, as has already been shown above. Nevertheless, let’s run with it for a moment to see if we can at least identify the chain of thought that leads to this remarkable “too complex to be designed” idea.
If one mistakenly thinks that we have to know that (a) a designer exists and (b) the designer is capable of producing the artifact in question, then it follows that we cannot infer life was designed. After all, the argument goes, we do not have direct independent evidence that a designer existed at the time nor that the designer was capable of producing the artifact in question. Thus, even though life is teeming with indicia of design, even though life is “too complex” compared with other things Elizabeth believes are designed, she is unwilling to infer design because she doesn’t have independent evidence about the designer and the designer’s capabilities.
She unfortunately fails, as do so many others, to realize that the exact same situation applies to almost every other inference of design – certainly to artifacts from the remote past, whether Stonehenge or otherwise. So her attempt to identify design is, at best, poorly thought through and inconsistently applied.
The Demand for Evidence Beyond the Artifact
Elizabeth says, regarding her conclusion that life was not designed:
But were evidence to arise, say, of optimised solutions from one lineage being transferred to another (as we install cameras in phones), or of evidence of artefactual fabrication, or of the presence of designers on early earth, or possibly something I haven’t thought of that indicated that living things were designed, I might have to think again.
Note the part I have highlighted in bold. This is the crux of the matter. She is looking for actual evidence of design – or at least a version of actual evidence she is willing to accept. In other words, if we find independent evidence to our liking that something was designed then we will acknowledge it was designed.
This is not to say that Elizabeth never infers design. She clearly does. But she reserves her willingness to infer design to those cases in which there is some other reason, something other than the characteristics of the artifact in question, to conclude the artifact may have been designed. Let’s say she concludes artifact x, such as Stonehenge, is designed. We might do well to ask how she could come to that conclusion in the case of artifact x, but not in the case of living systems.
The answer is rather simple. Perhaps she feels artifact x is closer in time to other things that are known to be designed; perhaps she feels that artifact x is more “similar” to things known to be designed; perhaps she just has a difficult time accepting the idea that a designer could be capable of designing living systems (remember, she thinks they are “too complex”); perhaps it is the pedestrian (but rapidly weakening) observation that no designer she knows of has yet designed a complex living system. Fine. As with the iPhone, we can infer design based on a number of criteria, apart from the characteristics of the artifact itself.
But that is not what the design inference is about. The design inference is precisely about identifying design from the artifact itself in the absence of additional evidence, in particular evidence about the existence or capabilities of the designer. Furthermore, as pointed out above, absent actual knowledge of design we must always fall back to an analysis of the artifact in question. Thus, any inference that relies only on other evidence will never be as solid or as robust as an inference based on the characteristics of the artifact itself.
Whatever the case, Elizabeth is clearly not willing to accept the design inference,*** despite any statements that could be understood as such. The most that can be said for Elizabeth’s approach is that in certain cases she is willing to make a design inference. Just not the design inference relevant for purposes of intelligent design. Her approach is not based on an examination of the artifact to find complex specified information, for example. Rather, it is a vague, ill-defined, “I need to see some additional corroborating evidence beyond the artifact that looks good to me” type of approach.
To be sure, one might indeed infer design with reference to other pieces of evidence beyond the artifact itself, or with reference to some poorly-defined “similar” system or some independent corroboration that designers were around at the time or some other piece of evidence that is palatable or seems subjectively good enough. But such an approach (i) does not constitute the design inference for purposes of intelligent design, and (ii) is embarrassingly poorly-defined and terribly inconsistent in application and practice.
Here we come face to face with the irony of the situation. The oft-repeated allegations that the design inference is poorly defined or difficult to apply are multiplied by orders of magnitude when the magnifying lens of critical thinking is turned on the inconsistent, poorly-defined approach of those individuals wont to claim that design can only be discerned in this field of study but not that, or in this time and place but not that, or with this type of designer but not that.
Conclusion
Despite continued criticisms of the design inference, upon closer examination the arguments of critics fail to meet the tests of objectivity, logic, and practical application. The design inference, properly understood, continues as an extremely reliable and robust, and in some cases our only, avenue to determine design.
Absent actual knowledge, which rarely, and in the case of historical events and artifacts almost never, exists, an inference to design always turns on an examination of the artifact in question. This is true with Stonehenge and other ancient artifacts just as much as with living systems. Assertions that we must have independent knowledge about the existence or characteristics of a designer before design can be inferred are misguided and demonstrate a basic lack of understanding of both how the design inference works and the direction of reasoning in investigation.
In addition, willingness to apply the design inference to only a particular field, or only a particular timeframe, or only a particular kind of designer bespeaks a fundamental confusion of the issues and, too often, an unspoken philosophical bias.
—–
* To nip a common red herring in the bud, we are talking about actual design, as commonly understood, by an intelligent being. Please, for the sake of rational discourse and for clarity of discussion in this thread, do not twist words and make claims about “nature designing” or something being “designed by a natural process” or similar nonsense. That is not what design means in the context of intelligent design and it is not what this thread is about.
** To nip the next red herring in the bud, we do not need to get into an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin discussion about what reality is, whether we can trust our senses, whether what we see is actually real. Such philosophical musings, interesting as they may be, are completely irrelevant to the present discussion and are not what this thread is about.
*** There is another important reason for Elizabeth’s unwillingness to accept the design inference, but that will have to wait for a subsequent post.
Bear with me for a moment while we dive into some examples that I think will be very helpful in elucidating the issues. Two specific examples will suffice.
Monday 18 January 2016
Yet more on reality's antidarwinian bias III
An "Exquisitely Designed" Enzyme that Maintains DNA Building Blocks
Evolution News & Views January 16, 2016 4:49 AM
It's molecular machine time, and today we'll be looking at a particularly amazing one. It's essential, it's "evolutionarily ancient," and it's unique. This machine, named ribonucleotide reductase, or RNR for short, is a beauty. News from MIT explains why your life depends on this machine:
Cell survival depends on having a plentiful and balanced pool of the four chemical building blocks that make up DNA -- the deoxyribonucleosides deoxyadenosine, deoxyguanosine, deoxycytidine, and thymidine, often abbreviated as A, G, C, and T. However, if too many of these components pile up, or if their usual ratio is disrupted, that can be deadly for the cell.
A new study from MIT chemists sheds light on a longstanding puzzle: how a single enzyme known as ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) generates all four of these building blocks and maintains the correct balance among them. [Emphasis added.]
The image shows the complex machine with active sites that precisely fit the four different building blocks. Its job is to take the ribonucleotides that make up RNA and turn them into the deoxyribonucleotides that make up DNA.
"There's no other enzyme that really can do that chemistry," she says. "It's the only one, and it's very different than most enzymes and has a lot of really unusual features."
In order for the machine's moving parts to work, one of several "effector molecules" has to fit into its special spot, like a key that opens a latch. This causes the enzyme to open up a "distant" active site and let the appropriate RNA building block in. Then, the enzyme latches it into place for its operation.
Depending on which of these effectors is bound to the distant regulatory site, the active site can accommodate one of the four ribounucleotide substrates. Effector binding promotes closing of part of the protein over the active site like a latch to lock in the substrate. If the wrong base is in the active site, the latch can't close and the substrate will diffuse out.
"It's exquisitely designed so that if you have the wrong substrate in there, you can't close up the active site," Drennan says. "It's a really elegant set of movements that allows for this kind of molecular screening process."
This four-in-one machine takes on four different shapes depending on whether the RNA nucleotide is A, G, C, or U. It sends out DNA's four, A, G, C, and T with the appropriate sugar deoxyribose instead of ribose (replacing an OH radical with a hydrogen atom, a "reduction" reaction). But that's not all this amazing machine does:
The effectors can also shut off production completely, by binding to a completely different site on the enzyme, if the pool of building blocks is getting too big.
RNR is a multi-tool if there ever was one. The effectors, the substrates and the active sites are all closely matched to the operation at hand, whether generating more DNA building blocks or regulating their supply in the cell. A paper from the Annual Review of Biochemistry (2007) puts it this way:
An intricate interplay between gene activation, enzyme inhibition, and protein degradation regulates, together with the allosteric effects, enzyme activity and provides the appropriate amount of deoxynucleotides for DNA replication and repair.
A lot of new building blocks are needed for repair and replication. You can see why this enzyme is essential for a cell when it divides or suffers stress.
The news item mentioned a latch, but another paper from 2015 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry speaks of a switch mechanism:
Ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) catalyzes the reduction of ribonucleotides to the corresponding deoxyribonucleotides, which are used as building blocks for DNA replication and repair. This process is tightly regulated via two allosteric sites, the specificity site (s-site) and the overall activity site (a-site). The a-site resides in an N-terminal ATP cone domain that binds dATP or ATP and functions as an on/off switch, whereas the composite s-site binds ATP, dATP, dTTP, or dGTP and determines which substrate to reduce.
It's like a surgical robot that has a clamp with an on-off switch. The switch (the effector) turns the machine on, opening up the distant active site and letting the appropriate substrate in. The enzyme then clamps down on the substrate and "reduces" it by replacing the oxygen radical with a hydrogen. When released, the DNA building block is ready for use, the effector switches the machine off, and the enzyme is ready for the next operation.
Somehow, when there are too many building blocks floating around in the cell, an effector binds to a different active site, disabling the machine. It's uncanny how each part seems to know what's needed and how to provide it. This involves feedback from the nucleus, where genes respond to the supply by either locking the RNR enzymes or making more of them.
Catherine Drennan on the MIT team calls this enzyme "evolutionarily ancient" and speculates about its origin.
Deoxyribonucleotides are generated from ribonucleotides, which are the building blocks for RNAs -- molecules that perform many important roles in gene expression. RNR, which catalyzes the conversion of ribonucleotides to deoxyribonucleotides, is an evolutionarily ancient enzyme that may have been responsible for the conversion of the earliest life forms, which were based on RNA, into DNA-based organisms, Drennan says.
She buys into the "RNA World" scenario for the origin of life, a view that is loaded with problems. RNR is an enzyme made of protein. Did a world of floating RNA fragments somehow build this complex, multi-part protein machine before DNA-based organisms existed? That makes no sense. A ribozyme with enough "code" for RNR would itself be impossibly complex to imagine forming by chance. It would have no way to translate that code into a polypeptide without a ribosome, also made of RNA and protein. Finally, even if by multiple miracles a primitive RNR appeared with its effectors and started cranking out product, the "RNA world" would have no idea what to do with a bunch of DNA building blocks floating around. Notably, Drennan's paper in eLife says nothing about any of this. Instead, it praises the "elegant set of protein rearrangements" performed by RNR.
RNR is one of a multitude of complex, highly-specific, multi-component machines with moving parts. Found in the simplest bacteria and archaea all the way up to human beings, it deserves better than to be treated like hopeful junk that arose by chance and found a job by accident. It deserves to be honored as an "exquisitely designed" molecular machine that performs an "intricate interplay" of functions vital to life, just like an intelligent designer would envision, plan, and create.
Evolution News & Views January 16, 2016 4:49 AM
It's molecular machine time, and today we'll be looking at a particularly amazing one. It's essential, it's "evolutionarily ancient," and it's unique. This machine, named ribonucleotide reductase, or RNR for short, is a beauty. News from MIT explains why your life depends on this machine:
Cell survival depends on having a plentiful and balanced pool of the four chemical building blocks that make up DNA -- the deoxyribonucleosides deoxyadenosine, deoxyguanosine, deoxycytidine, and thymidine, often abbreviated as A, G, C, and T. However, if too many of these components pile up, or if their usual ratio is disrupted, that can be deadly for the cell.
A new study from MIT chemists sheds light on a longstanding puzzle: how a single enzyme known as ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) generates all four of these building blocks and maintains the correct balance among them. [Emphasis added.]
The image shows the complex machine with active sites that precisely fit the four different building blocks. Its job is to take the ribonucleotides that make up RNA and turn them into the deoxyribonucleotides that make up DNA.
"There's no other enzyme that really can do that chemistry," she says. "It's the only one, and it's very different than most enzymes and has a lot of really unusual features."
In order for the machine's moving parts to work, one of several "effector molecules" has to fit into its special spot, like a key that opens a latch. This causes the enzyme to open up a "distant" active site and let the appropriate RNA building block in. Then, the enzyme latches it into place for its operation.
Depending on which of these effectors is bound to the distant regulatory site, the active site can accommodate one of the four ribounucleotide substrates. Effector binding promotes closing of part of the protein over the active site like a latch to lock in the substrate. If the wrong base is in the active site, the latch can't close and the substrate will diffuse out.
"It's exquisitely designed so that if you have the wrong substrate in there, you can't close up the active site," Drennan says. "It's a really elegant set of movements that allows for this kind of molecular screening process."
This four-in-one machine takes on four different shapes depending on whether the RNA nucleotide is A, G, C, or U. It sends out DNA's four, A, G, C, and T with the appropriate sugar deoxyribose instead of ribose (replacing an OH radical with a hydrogen atom, a "reduction" reaction). But that's not all this amazing machine does:
The effectors can also shut off production completely, by binding to a completely different site on the enzyme, if the pool of building blocks is getting too big.
RNR is a multi-tool if there ever was one. The effectors, the substrates and the active sites are all closely matched to the operation at hand, whether generating more DNA building blocks or regulating their supply in the cell. A paper from the Annual Review of Biochemistry (2007) puts it this way:
An intricate interplay between gene activation, enzyme inhibition, and protein degradation regulates, together with the allosteric effects, enzyme activity and provides the appropriate amount of deoxynucleotides for DNA replication and repair.
A lot of new building blocks are needed for repair and replication. You can see why this enzyme is essential for a cell when it divides or suffers stress.
The news item mentioned a latch, but another paper from 2015 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry speaks of a switch mechanism:
Ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) catalyzes the reduction of ribonucleotides to the corresponding deoxyribonucleotides, which are used as building blocks for DNA replication and repair. This process is tightly regulated via two allosteric sites, the specificity site (s-site) and the overall activity site (a-site). The a-site resides in an N-terminal ATP cone domain that binds dATP or ATP and functions as an on/off switch, whereas the composite s-site binds ATP, dATP, dTTP, or dGTP and determines which substrate to reduce.
It's like a surgical robot that has a clamp with an on-off switch. The switch (the effector) turns the machine on, opening up the distant active site and letting the appropriate substrate in. The enzyme then clamps down on the substrate and "reduces" it by replacing the oxygen radical with a hydrogen. When released, the DNA building block is ready for use, the effector switches the machine off, and the enzyme is ready for the next operation.
Somehow, when there are too many building blocks floating around in the cell, an effector binds to a different active site, disabling the machine. It's uncanny how each part seems to know what's needed and how to provide it. This involves feedback from the nucleus, where genes respond to the supply by either locking the RNR enzymes or making more of them.
Catherine Drennan on the MIT team calls this enzyme "evolutionarily ancient" and speculates about its origin.
Deoxyribonucleotides are generated from ribonucleotides, which are the building blocks for RNAs -- molecules that perform many important roles in gene expression. RNR, which catalyzes the conversion of ribonucleotides to deoxyribonucleotides, is an evolutionarily ancient enzyme that may have been responsible for the conversion of the earliest life forms, which were based on RNA, into DNA-based organisms, Drennan says.
She buys into the "RNA World" scenario for the origin of life, a view that is loaded with problems. RNR is an enzyme made of protein. Did a world of floating RNA fragments somehow build this complex, multi-part protein machine before DNA-based organisms existed? That makes no sense. A ribozyme with enough "code" for RNR would itself be impossibly complex to imagine forming by chance. It would have no way to translate that code into a polypeptide without a ribosome, also made of RNA and protein. Finally, even if by multiple miracles a primitive RNR appeared with its effectors and started cranking out product, the "RNA world" would have no idea what to do with a bunch of DNA building blocks floating around. Notably, Drennan's paper in eLife says nothing about any of this. Instead, it praises the "elegant set of protein rearrangements" performed by RNR.
RNR is one of a multitude of complex, highly-specific, multi-component machines with moving parts. Found in the simplest bacteria and archaea all the way up to human beings, it deserves better than to be treated like hopeful junk that arose by chance and found a job by accident. It deserves to be honored as an "exquisitely designed" molecular machine that performs an "intricate interplay" of functions vital to life, just like an intelligent designer would envision, plan, and create.
Patience's rights tossed under the bus in the lone star state?
The Arrogance of "Doctor Knows Best"
Wesley J. Smith January 15, 2016 2:19 PM
The Texas Advance Directive Act (TADA) allows a hospital bioethics committee and doctors to veto wanted life-sustaining treatment if they believe the suffering thereby caused is unwarranted -- with the cost of care always in the unspoken background. It is a form of ad hoc health care rationing -- death panels, if you will -- that place the moral values and opinions of strangers over those of the patient and family.
Futile care theory would even allow strangers to veto the contents of a patient's written and expressly stated advance directive.
Texas Right to Life (among others) has been an adamant opponent of the law, attempting to get it repealed. This effort has been impeded repeatedly by the Texas Catholic Conference (see my article here) perhaps because the state's Catholic hospital association likes the law. Texas Alliance for Life (TAL) often carries the Catholic Conference's water on this matter, in agreement on this issue, ironically, with the utilitarian bioethics movement.
Why? It's a bit of a puzzlement. I don't doubt, they think it is the right thing. But it should also be noted that hospitals benefit financially by refusing wanted but expensive treatment. Perhaps their social justice inclinations see limited resources as best spent on other patients.
In the wake of the Chris Dunn case, in which the patient -- conscience and aware -- clearly wanted life-sustaining treatment to continue, TAL defenders of futile care expose the "doctor knows best" arrogance of the futile care movement. From "Balancing the Rights of Patients and Doctors," in Public Discourse (my emphasis):
A person in possession of his mental faculties is not morally bound to choose treatments whose negative effects are disproportionate to any good that could come from them. By the law of transitivity, it would seem to follow that neither his doctor nor his surrogates are either. Some may say that patients are the only ones able to judge the proportionality of suffering due to life-sustaining treatments. In this case, those treatments decreased the ability of the patient to judge.
I have heard such excuses and rationalizations in futile care controversies again and again: The patient doesn't really know what is best; the family is acting on guilt; misplaced religious belief is forcing a wrong choice; they should leave such decisions to the "experts." Bah!
Besides, Catholic moral teaching -- at least, as I understand it -- allows the patient to decide when suffering being experienced supersedes the benefit being received. It does not give that decision to doctors or bioethicists. Thus, for example, St. John Paul II decided not to try to stay alive by any means necessary. He was not prevented from doing so by others as is done in futile care cases.
The article also exhibits some mendacity by omission when it discusses the refusal by other hospitals to take Dunn, while leaving out important facts:
It is telling that, even with the assistance of the hospital over several weeks to find another care provider, none would accept Chris's transfer, indicating that other doctors agreed with the attending physician's prognosis.
But patients caught up in futile care cases usually lose money for hospitals in our capitated funding system. Moreover, this whole Texas controversy began when Houston hospitals created a futile care policy and agreed to honor such determinations made by other institutions. Heads we win, tails you lose.
If continuing wanted treatment is the wrong thing to do, that should not be decided by a Star Chamber bioethics committee made up of colleagues who reflect corporate or institutional values, meeting in secret with no real transparency or accountability. Rather, if maintaining life when that is wanted is so egregious as to be inhumane, the controversy belongs in open court, with cross examination, an official record, and a right to appeal.
Bioethics committees have a very important role to play as mediating bodies in the event of treatment disputes. But they should never be empowered to become institutionally authorized, quasi-judicial death panels.
Wesley J. Smith January 15, 2016 2:19 PM
The Texas Advance Directive Act (TADA) allows a hospital bioethics committee and doctors to veto wanted life-sustaining treatment if they believe the suffering thereby caused is unwarranted -- with the cost of care always in the unspoken background. It is a form of ad hoc health care rationing -- death panels, if you will -- that place the moral values and opinions of strangers over those of the patient and family.
Futile care theory would even allow strangers to veto the contents of a patient's written and expressly stated advance directive.
Texas Right to Life (among others) has been an adamant opponent of the law, attempting to get it repealed. This effort has been impeded repeatedly by the Texas Catholic Conference (see my article here) perhaps because the state's Catholic hospital association likes the law. Texas Alliance for Life (TAL) often carries the Catholic Conference's water on this matter, in agreement on this issue, ironically, with the utilitarian bioethics movement.
Why? It's a bit of a puzzlement. I don't doubt, they think it is the right thing. But it should also be noted that hospitals benefit financially by refusing wanted but expensive treatment. Perhaps their social justice inclinations see limited resources as best spent on other patients.
In the wake of the Chris Dunn case, in which the patient -- conscience and aware -- clearly wanted life-sustaining treatment to continue, TAL defenders of futile care expose the "doctor knows best" arrogance of the futile care movement. From "Balancing the Rights of Patients and Doctors," in Public Discourse (my emphasis):
A person in possession of his mental faculties is not morally bound to choose treatments whose negative effects are disproportionate to any good that could come from them. By the law of transitivity, it would seem to follow that neither his doctor nor his surrogates are either. Some may say that patients are the only ones able to judge the proportionality of suffering due to life-sustaining treatments. In this case, those treatments decreased the ability of the patient to judge.
I have heard such excuses and rationalizations in futile care controversies again and again: The patient doesn't really know what is best; the family is acting on guilt; misplaced religious belief is forcing a wrong choice; they should leave such decisions to the "experts." Bah!
Besides, Catholic moral teaching -- at least, as I understand it -- allows the patient to decide when suffering being experienced supersedes the benefit being received. It does not give that decision to doctors or bioethicists. Thus, for example, St. John Paul II decided not to try to stay alive by any means necessary. He was not prevented from doing so by others as is done in futile care cases.
The article also exhibits some mendacity by omission when it discusses the refusal by other hospitals to take Dunn, while leaving out important facts:
It is telling that, even with the assistance of the hospital over several weeks to find another care provider, none would accept Chris's transfer, indicating that other doctors agreed with the attending physician's prognosis.
But patients caught up in futile care cases usually lose money for hospitals in our capitated funding system. Moreover, this whole Texas controversy began when Houston hospitals created a futile care policy and agreed to honor such determinations made by other institutions. Heads we win, tails you lose.
If continuing wanted treatment is the wrong thing to do, that should not be decided by a Star Chamber bioethics committee made up of colleagues who reflect corporate or institutional values, meeting in secret with no real transparency or accountability. Rather, if maintaining life when that is wanted is so egregious as to be inhumane, the controversy belongs in open court, with cross examination, an official record, and a right to appeal.
Bioethics committees have a very important role to play as mediating bodies in the event of treatment disputes. But they should never be empowered to become institutionally authorized, quasi-judicial death panels.
The Watchtower Society's commentary on Goodness.
GOODNESS:
The quality or state of being good; moral excellence; virtue. Goodness is solid through and through, with no badness or rottenness. It is a positive quality and expresses itself in the performance of good and beneficial acts toward others. The most common words for “good” in the Bible are the Hebrew tohv and the Greek a·ga·thosʹ; a·ga·thosʹ is usually used in a moral or religious sense.
Jehovah’s Goodness. Jehovah God is good in the absolute and consummate sense. The Scriptures say: “Good and upright is Jehovah” (Ps 25:8), and they exclaim: “O how great his goodness is!” (Zec 9:17) Jesus Christ, though he had this quality of moral excellence, would not accept “Good” as a title, saying to one who addressed him as “Good Teacher”: “Why do you call me good? Nobody is good, except one, God.” (Mr 10:17, 18) He thus recognized Jehovah as the ultimate standard of what is good.
When Moses asked to see His glory, Jehovah replied: “I myself shall cause all my goodness to pass before your face, and I will declare the name of Jehovah before you.” Jehovah screened Moses from looking upon his face, but as he passed by (evidently by means of his angelic representative [Ac 7:53]) he declared to Moses: “Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness and truth, preserving loving-kindness for thousands, pardoning error and transgression and sin, but by no means will he give exemption from punishment.”—Ex 33:18, 19, 22; 34:6, 7.
Here goodness is seen to be a quality that involves mercy, loving-kindness, and truth but does not condone or cooperate in any way with badness. On this basis David could pray to Jehovah to forgive his sins ‘for the sake of Jehovah’s goodness.’ (Ps 25:7) Jehovah’s goodness, as well as his love, was involved in the giving of his Son as a sacrifice for sins. By this he provided a means for helping those who would want that which is truly good, and at the same time he condemned badness and laid the basis for fully satisfying justice and righteousness.—Ro 3:23-26.
A Fruit of the Spirit. Goodness is a fruit of God’s spirit and of the light from his Word of truth. (Ga 5:22; Eph 5:9) It is to be cultivated by the Christian. Obedience to Jehovah’s commands develops goodness; no man has goodness on his own merit. (Ro 7:18) The psalmist appeals to God as the Source of goodness: “Teach me goodness, sensibleness and knowledge themselves, for in your commandments I have exercised faith,” and, “You are good and are doing good. Teach me your regulations.”—Ps 119:66, 68.
Goodness Bestows Benefits. Goodness can also mean beneficence, the bestowing of beneficial things upon others. Jehovah desires to express goodness toward his people, as the apostle Paul prayed for the Christians in Thessalonica: “We always pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling and perform completely all he pleases of goodness and the work of faith with power.” (2Th 1:11) Many are the examples of God’s abundant goodness to those who look to him. (1Ki 8:66; Ps 31:19; Isa 63:7; Jer 31:12, 14) Moreover, “Jehovah is good to all, and his mercies are over all his works.” (Ps 145:9) With a purpose he extends good to all, that his goodness may bring many to serve him and that they may thereby gain life. Likewise, any individual exercising goodness is a blessing to his associates.—Pr 11:10.
As servants of God and imitators of him, Christians are commanded to prove what is God’s good and perfect will for them (Ro 12:2); they are to cling to what is good (Ro 12:9), to do it (Ro 13:3), to work what is good (Ro 2:10), to follow after it (1Th 5:15), to be zealous for it (1Pe 3:13), to imitate what is good (3Jo 11), and to conquer evil with it (Ro 12:21). Their doing of good is to be especially extended to those related to them in the Christian faith; additionally, it is to be practiced toward all others.—Ga 6:10.
A Related Term. Similar to the Greek word for good (a·ga·thosʹ) is another word, ka·losʹ. The latter denotes that which is intrinsically good, beautiful, well adapted to its circumstances or ends (as fine ground, or soil; Mt 13:8, 23), and that which is of fine quality, including that which is ethically good, right, or honorable (as God’s name; Jas 2:7). It is closely related in meaning to good, but may be distinguished by being translated “fine,” “right,” “honest,” or “well.”—Mt 3:10; Jas 4:17; Heb 13:18; Ro 14:21.
The quality or state of being good; moral excellence; virtue. Goodness is solid through and through, with no badness or rottenness. It is a positive quality and expresses itself in the performance of good and beneficial acts toward others. The most common words for “good” in the Bible are the Hebrew tohv and the Greek a·ga·thosʹ; a·ga·thosʹ is usually used in a moral or religious sense.
Jehovah’s Goodness. Jehovah God is good in the absolute and consummate sense. The Scriptures say: “Good and upright is Jehovah” (Ps 25:8), and they exclaim: “O how great his goodness is!” (Zec 9:17) Jesus Christ, though he had this quality of moral excellence, would not accept “Good” as a title, saying to one who addressed him as “Good Teacher”: “Why do you call me good? Nobody is good, except one, God.” (Mr 10:17, 18) He thus recognized Jehovah as the ultimate standard of what is good.
When Moses asked to see His glory, Jehovah replied: “I myself shall cause all my goodness to pass before your face, and I will declare the name of Jehovah before you.” Jehovah screened Moses from looking upon his face, but as he passed by (evidently by means of his angelic representative [Ac 7:53]) he declared to Moses: “Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness and truth, preserving loving-kindness for thousands, pardoning error and transgression and sin, but by no means will he give exemption from punishment.”—Ex 33:18, 19, 22; 34:6, 7.
Here goodness is seen to be a quality that involves mercy, loving-kindness, and truth but does not condone or cooperate in any way with badness. On this basis David could pray to Jehovah to forgive his sins ‘for the sake of Jehovah’s goodness.’ (Ps 25:7) Jehovah’s goodness, as well as his love, was involved in the giving of his Son as a sacrifice for sins. By this he provided a means for helping those who would want that which is truly good, and at the same time he condemned badness and laid the basis for fully satisfying justice and righteousness.—Ro 3:23-26.
A Fruit of the Spirit. Goodness is a fruit of God’s spirit and of the light from his Word of truth. (Ga 5:22; Eph 5:9) It is to be cultivated by the Christian. Obedience to Jehovah’s commands develops goodness; no man has goodness on his own merit. (Ro 7:18) The psalmist appeals to God as the Source of goodness: “Teach me goodness, sensibleness and knowledge themselves, for in your commandments I have exercised faith,” and, “You are good and are doing good. Teach me your regulations.”—Ps 119:66, 68.
Goodness Bestows Benefits. Goodness can also mean beneficence, the bestowing of beneficial things upon others. Jehovah desires to express goodness toward his people, as the apostle Paul prayed for the Christians in Thessalonica: “We always pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling and perform completely all he pleases of goodness and the work of faith with power.” (2Th 1:11) Many are the examples of God’s abundant goodness to those who look to him. (1Ki 8:66; Ps 31:19; Isa 63:7; Jer 31:12, 14) Moreover, “Jehovah is good to all, and his mercies are over all his works.” (Ps 145:9) With a purpose he extends good to all, that his goodness may bring many to serve him and that they may thereby gain life. Likewise, any individual exercising goodness is a blessing to his associates.—Pr 11:10.
As servants of God and imitators of him, Christians are commanded to prove what is God’s good and perfect will for them (Ro 12:2); they are to cling to what is good (Ro 12:9), to do it (Ro 13:3), to work what is good (Ro 2:10), to follow after it (1Th 5:15), to be zealous for it (1Pe 3:13), to imitate what is good (3Jo 11), and to conquer evil with it (Ro 12:21). Their doing of good is to be especially extended to those related to them in the Christian faith; additionally, it is to be practiced toward all others.—Ga 6:10.
A Related Term. Similar to the Greek word for good (a·ga·thosʹ) is another word, ka·losʹ. The latter denotes that which is intrinsically good, beautiful, well adapted to its circumstances or ends (as fine ground, or soil; Mt 13:8, 23), and that which is of fine quality, including that which is ethically good, right, or honorable (as God’s name; Jas 2:7). It is closely related in meaning to good, but may be distinguished by being translated “fine,” “right,” “honest,” or “well.”—Mt 3:10; Jas 4:17; Heb 13:18; Ro 14:21.
Sunday 17 January 2016
File under "well said" XIX
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Friday 15 January 2016
On our neighbours ' minds III
Animal Minds: In Search of the Minimal Self:
New Scientist suggested, as one of its big ideas for 2015, that the ability of humans to talk to animals would transform what it means to be human. Actually, it wouldn't. But the ability of animals to understand what humans are saying would transform what it means to be an animal.
In a 2009 issue of Nature, Johan J. Bolhuis and Clive D. L. Wynne asked a key question: Can evolution explain how minds work? They identified serious flaws in the studies of animal minds. One of them is interpreting animal behavior as if it were human behavior (anthropomorphism):
For instance, capuchin monkeys were thought to have a sense of fairness because they reject a slice of cucumber if they see another monkey in an adjacent cage, performing the same task, rewarded with a more-sought-after grape. Researchers interpreted a monkey's refusal to eat the cucumber as evidence of "inequity aversion" prompted by seeing another monkey being more generously rewarded. Yet, closer analysis has revealed that a monkey will still refuse cucumber when a grape is placed in a nearby empty cage. This suggests that the monkeys simply reject lesser rewards when better ones are available. Such findings have cast doubt on the straightforward application of Darwinism to cognition. Some have even called Darwin's idea of continuity of mind a mistake.
It is a mistake. Continuities can be merely apparent, not actual.
Consider, for example, the laptop computer vs. the typewriter. Both feature the QWERTYUIOP keyboard. That might suggest a physical continuity between the two machines. The story would run thus: Computer developers added more and more parts to the typewriter, and subtracted some, until they had transformed the typewrter into a laptop.
But of course, they didn't. They adapted a widely recognized keyboard layout to an entirely new type of machine. Continuities are created by history, not laws. If we don't know the history, we don't know whether a similarity reflects continuity or not.
Bolhuis and Wynne continue, "In other words, evolutionary convergence may be more important than common descent in accounting for similar cognitive outcomes in different animal groups."
Indeed. There is no specific type of brain uniquely associated with intelligent behavior in animals (other than humans). There is, however, convergence in intelligent behavior among vertebrates (crows) and invertebrates (octopuses).
Yet most invertebrate species do not stand out in intelligence. That fact should receive more attention than it does. The nature and origin of intelligence may be quite different from what researchers have supposed.
We have tentatively identified some patterns. Metabolism and anatomy may play a larger role than earlier suspected. For example, reptiles can show intelligent behavior when their metabolism permits, as can invertebrates with sophisticated appendages, such as octopuses and squid.
It is even worth asking whether individual animals demonstrate more intelligence if they live with humans. For one thing, they may live much longer and in more complex environments.
Some might protest that when humans eliminate the lethal razor of natural selection, "daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest," we cause animals to become less intelligent.
But is intelligence highly selected in nature? As engineers know all too well, new solutions to any problem are accompanied by numerous failures. The "smart crow" and "smart primate" tests, for example, are devised by humans who systematically reward the animals for carefully designed feats of intelligence, but do not destroy them for failure. Blind nature rewards and penalizes more haphazardly than that.
Then there is the fact that intelligent animals often do not learn from each other. In some intelligent bird species, one bird can solve a problem but others do not learn the solution by copying that bird, even if it is obviously in their evolutionary interests to do so. Thus the species does not develop a body of knowledge. As each clever bird dies, all gains are wiped out. There is no vast history of solved problems, as there is in human civilization, for even the cleverest bird to build on.
Bolthuis and Wynne offer a sober prediction:
As long as researchers focus on identifying human-like behaviour in other animals, the job of classifying the cognition of different species will be forever tied up in thickets of arbitrary nomenclature that will not advance our understanding of the mechanisms of cognition. For comparative psychology to progress, we must study animal and human minds empirically, without naïve evolutionary presuppositions.
They're right, and here is a useful illustration of the problem: A recent article on the role of epigenetics in the mating chances of male fish refers to their social status. I questioned the use of the term "social status" in relation to the behavior of fish, and was promptly informed by a knowledgeable fish hobbyist that "All biologists understand what is meant by this."
If so, that's a problem. "Social status" is a term developed by human beings to describe a conscious experience among humans. But animals may not experience their "social status" in the same way we do. A bee may be fed "royal jelly," and become a queen -- but is she conscious of her status? Are the bees that tend her conscious of it? The insect mind may not even work in a way that enables such an understanding.
So where in this spectrum, ranging from merciful oblivion through acutely painful knowledge, do male fish fighting over mates fit? Do they experience the conflict as "selves"? We simply don't know, and that fact should inspire caution in our choice of terminology. Careless words can subvert careful questions.
Philosopher Vincent Torley, who wrote his thesis on animal mind, agrees respecting the bees, noting, "A neural representation of each individual's ranking within a group does not require its possessor to have the highly abstract notion of 'social status.' Indeed, a representation of a ranking would not require consciousness at all."
And to think that among human beings, a sense of social status is so finely honed that it can depend on concepts as abstract and immaterial as the numbers in a "Hollywood" or "power" zip code...
So What Sorts of Consciousness Might Animals Have?
Philosopher Thomas Nagel is famous for asking the question, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974). He meant that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism." If so, the bat experiences events, as opposed to merely being one of them.
Is the bat a "self"? A "self" is more than the mere drive to continue existing that distinguishes all life from non-life. Self must also be more than sentience (an earthworm's reaction to light, for example, need not be conscious). It implies the existence of not-self in a complex environment. It does not, however, imply immortality or a capacity for abstract thought.
Perhaps the simplest way of putting it would be that a dog not only wants something, but he knows what he wants and whether he has gotten it -- and may learn various skills along the way for getting it again, and intentionally remember them. We could call this intentionality.
Vincent Torley's thesis is titled, "The Anatomy of a Minimal Mind." I prefer to use the term "minimal self" for individual animal intelligence. As a layperson, I find it easier to understand; it does not raise so many complex questions as "mind."
For example, Middle Dog resents his position in a household because he wants to be Top Dog. I find his canine mind generally opaque. However, I can see that he consciously experiences his resentment, even if it might lack reason, moral sentiment, or empathy. And Middle Dog will know if he succeeds in his quest or not. (So, probably, will everyone else.)
Some, like philosopher Edward Feser, argue that animal minds cannot form concepts, whereas others claim that chimpanzees are entering the Stone Age.
Torley takes a middle view: Animals can, it appears, form concepts, in the sense of "same vs. different" or "more vs. less." But in the absence of language, they typically cannot process abstractions. Nor do intelligent animals create symbols, understand abstract rules, or probe beneath mere perceptions, all of which are everyday matters for humans.
They do not, for example, survey their own mental states ("Why do I think I should bark at the moon?"). Yet humans of average intelligence may often ask themselves, "Why am I doing this anyway?"
As Torley says, "A defender of animal rationality could still argue that non-human animals might still possess a very simple, primitive concept of 'self,' which is 'built into' their psyches":
I have argued that the key reason why we can reasonably impute mental states to these creatures, and describe them as having minimal minds, is that both their internal representations of the outside world (minimal maps) and their patterns of bodily movement robustly instantiate a key feature that was formerly thought to be the hallmark of mental states: intrinsic intentionality.
No "Tree of Intelligence" Pattern
Naturalism, as a philosophical commitment, requires us to start with the assumption that the human mind is merely the outcome of a long, slow, random process, winding through various forms of animal mind. This suggests we can learn a great deal about the human mind by studying animal minds.
The empirical evidence does not really support that view. Not only is the human mind more powerful by orders of magnitude, but animal minds show no consistent tree of intelligence pattern in their development that would clearly support the naturalist interpretation.
We do not yet have a theory that sheds light on why some animal species appear much more intelligent than others, leaping past conventional taxonomic classifications. But seeing past Darwin to the question of how information really originates may help us acquire one.
New Scientist suggested, as one of its big ideas for 2015, that the ability of humans to talk to animals would transform what it means to be human. Actually, it wouldn't. But the ability of animals to understand what humans are saying would transform what it means to be an animal.
In a 2009 issue of Nature, Johan J. Bolhuis and Clive D. L. Wynne asked a key question: Can evolution explain how minds work? They identified serious flaws in the studies of animal minds. One of them is interpreting animal behavior as if it were human behavior (anthropomorphism):
For instance, capuchin monkeys were thought to have a sense of fairness because they reject a slice of cucumber if they see another monkey in an adjacent cage, performing the same task, rewarded with a more-sought-after grape. Researchers interpreted a monkey's refusal to eat the cucumber as evidence of "inequity aversion" prompted by seeing another monkey being more generously rewarded. Yet, closer analysis has revealed that a monkey will still refuse cucumber when a grape is placed in a nearby empty cage. This suggests that the monkeys simply reject lesser rewards when better ones are available. Such findings have cast doubt on the straightforward application of Darwinism to cognition. Some have even called Darwin's idea of continuity of mind a mistake.
It is a mistake. Continuities can be merely apparent, not actual.
Consider, for example, the laptop computer vs. the typewriter. Both feature the QWERTYUIOP keyboard. That might suggest a physical continuity between the two machines. The story would run thus: Computer developers added more and more parts to the typewriter, and subtracted some, until they had transformed the typewrter into a laptop.
But of course, they didn't. They adapted a widely recognized keyboard layout to an entirely new type of machine. Continuities are created by history, not laws. If we don't know the history, we don't know whether a similarity reflects continuity or not.
Bolhuis and Wynne continue, "In other words, evolutionary convergence may be more important than common descent in accounting for similar cognitive outcomes in different animal groups."
Indeed. There is no specific type of brain uniquely associated with intelligent behavior in animals (other than humans). There is, however, convergence in intelligent behavior among vertebrates (crows) and invertebrates (octopuses).
Yet most invertebrate species do not stand out in intelligence. That fact should receive more attention than it does. The nature and origin of intelligence may be quite different from what researchers have supposed.
We have tentatively identified some patterns. Metabolism and anatomy may play a larger role than earlier suspected. For example, reptiles can show intelligent behavior when their metabolism permits, as can invertebrates with sophisticated appendages, such as octopuses and squid.
It is even worth asking whether individual animals demonstrate more intelligence if they live with humans. For one thing, they may live much longer and in more complex environments.
Some might protest that when humans eliminate the lethal razor of natural selection, "daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest," we cause animals to become less intelligent.
But is intelligence highly selected in nature? As engineers know all too well, new solutions to any problem are accompanied by numerous failures. The "smart crow" and "smart primate" tests, for example, are devised by humans who systematically reward the animals for carefully designed feats of intelligence, but do not destroy them for failure. Blind nature rewards and penalizes more haphazardly than that.
Then there is the fact that intelligent animals often do not learn from each other. In some intelligent bird species, one bird can solve a problem but others do not learn the solution by copying that bird, even if it is obviously in their evolutionary interests to do so. Thus the species does not develop a body of knowledge. As each clever bird dies, all gains are wiped out. There is no vast history of solved problems, as there is in human civilization, for even the cleverest bird to build on.
Bolthuis and Wynne offer a sober prediction:
As long as researchers focus on identifying human-like behaviour in other animals, the job of classifying the cognition of different species will be forever tied up in thickets of arbitrary nomenclature that will not advance our understanding of the mechanisms of cognition. For comparative psychology to progress, we must study animal and human minds empirically, without naïve evolutionary presuppositions.
They're right, and here is a useful illustration of the problem: A recent article on the role of epigenetics in the mating chances of male fish refers to their social status. I questioned the use of the term "social status" in relation to the behavior of fish, and was promptly informed by a knowledgeable fish hobbyist that "All biologists understand what is meant by this."
If so, that's a problem. "Social status" is a term developed by human beings to describe a conscious experience among humans. But animals may not experience their "social status" in the same way we do. A bee may be fed "royal jelly," and become a queen -- but is she conscious of her status? Are the bees that tend her conscious of it? The insect mind may not even work in a way that enables such an understanding.
So where in this spectrum, ranging from merciful oblivion through acutely painful knowledge, do male fish fighting over mates fit? Do they experience the conflict as "selves"? We simply don't know, and that fact should inspire caution in our choice of terminology. Careless words can subvert careful questions.
Philosopher Vincent Torley, who wrote his thesis on animal mind, agrees respecting the bees, noting, "A neural representation of each individual's ranking within a group does not require its possessor to have the highly abstract notion of 'social status.' Indeed, a representation of a ranking would not require consciousness at all."
And to think that among human beings, a sense of social status is so finely honed that it can depend on concepts as abstract and immaterial as the numbers in a "Hollywood" or "power" zip code...
So What Sorts of Consciousness Might Animals Have?
Philosopher Thomas Nagel is famous for asking the question, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974). He meant that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism." If so, the bat experiences events, as opposed to merely being one of them.
Is the bat a "self"? A "self" is more than the mere drive to continue existing that distinguishes all life from non-life. Self must also be more than sentience (an earthworm's reaction to light, for example, need not be conscious). It implies the existence of not-self in a complex environment. It does not, however, imply immortality or a capacity for abstract thought.
Perhaps the simplest way of putting it would be that a dog not only wants something, but he knows what he wants and whether he has gotten it -- and may learn various skills along the way for getting it again, and intentionally remember them. We could call this intentionality.
Vincent Torley's thesis is titled, "The Anatomy of a Minimal Mind." I prefer to use the term "minimal self" for individual animal intelligence. As a layperson, I find it easier to understand; it does not raise so many complex questions as "mind."
For example, Middle Dog resents his position in a household because he wants to be Top Dog. I find his canine mind generally opaque. However, I can see that he consciously experiences his resentment, even if it might lack reason, moral sentiment, or empathy. And Middle Dog will know if he succeeds in his quest or not. (So, probably, will everyone else.)
Some, like philosopher Edward Feser, argue that animal minds cannot form concepts, whereas others claim that chimpanzees are entering the Stone Age.
Torley takes a middle view: Animals can, it appears, form concepts, in the sense of "same vs. different" or "more vs. less." But in the absence of language, they typically cannot process abstractions. Nor do intelligent animals create symbols, understand abstract rules, or probe beneath mere perceptions, all of which are everyday matters for humans.
They do not, for example, survey their own mental states ("Why do I think I should bark at the moon?"). Yet humans of average intelligence may often ask themselves, "Why am I doing this anyway?"
As Torley says, "A defender of animal rationality could still argue that non-human animals might still possess a very simple, primitive concept of 'self,' which is 'built into' their psyches":
I have argued that the key reason why we can reasonably impute mental states to these creatures, and describe them as having minimal minds, is that both their internal representations of the outside world (minimal maps) and their patterns of bodily movement robustly instantiate a key feature that was formerly thought to be the hallmark of mental states: intrinsic intentionality.
No "Tree of Intelligence" Pattern
Naturalism, as a philosophical commitment, requires us to start with the assumption that the human mind is merely the outcome of a long, slow, random process, winding through various forms of animal mind. This suggests we can learn a great deal about the human mind by studying animal minds.
The empirical evidence does not really support that view. Not only is the human mind more powerful by orders of magnitude, but animal minds show no consistent tree of intelligence pattern in their development that would clearly support the naturalist interpretation.
We do not yet have a theory that sheds light on why some animal species appear much more intelligent than others, leaping past conventional taxonomic classifications. But seeing past Darwin to the question of how information really originates may help us acquire one.
Darwinism Vs. the real world XXIV
The Immune System: An Army Inside You:
Howard Glicksman January 14, 2016 6:20 PM
Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News is delighted to offer this series, "The Designed Body." For the complete series, see here Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.
The body is made up of matter organized into trillions of cells that make up its tissues and organs. Since all matter must follow the laws of nature, this means that the body must do the same. In earlier articles I have shown that the body must overcome the laws of nature to survive. The sodium-potassium pumps, for example, are needed to allow each cell to control its volume and chemical content by resisting diffusion and osmosis. There must be enough albumin in the blood to resist the natural force of hydrostatic pressure and maintain blood volume and flow to the tissues. The sympathetic nervous system must increase the cardiac output and peripheral vascular resistance to elevate the blood pressure sufficiently to counteract gravity when we stand up.
With the emergence of life, not only did the cellular and organic make-up of the body require specific innovations to overcome the laws of nature and survive, it also had to learn how to deal with what it encountered in its environment. Life does not take place in a vacuum or in the imaginations of evolutionary biologists. Hemostasis and the clots it forms allow the body to prevent itself from bleeding to death when it is bumped, scraped, or cut. And the bones, muscles, and nerves work together so the body can detect danger and avoid or defend itself from it.
In my last article I showed that the body is always being exposed to microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi, which are present in nature but are too small to see with the naked eye. If these microbes invade the body and become widespread, they can cause a lot of damage. We saw that the first line of defense against infection is the skin and the epithelial tissues that line the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and genitourinary tracts.
If microbes breach these passive barriers and enter the tissues, the second line of defense swings into action. This is called the immune system, and it consists of numerous different cells and proteins that work together to fight and usually defeat the invading force. For our earliest ancestors to survive long enough to reproduce, they would have needed this two-pronged defense. Neither the passive barriers that protect the underlying tissues, nor the immune system, is capable, on its own, of protecting the body from life-threatening infection. They both have to be present and in working order .
In ancient times, when invaders penetrated the surrounding protective wall of a town, the defenders generally had four important tasks to perform very quickly. The first was to detect and positively identify the enemy. The second was to sound the alarm so others could help join in the defense. The third was to provide information on the enemy to those in reserve. And the fourth was to repel, wound, or kill the intruders to protect the residents. Similarly, once microbes get past the epithelium and penetrate into the tissues below, the body's immune defense must have the ability to perform these same four important tasks as well.
The first requires that the cells and proteins of the immune system have a way of detecting the presence of the microbes and be able to identify them as an invading force that needs to be destroyed. In other words, are these cells host cells (self), or foreign cells (not self)? The job of the immune system is to kill invading microorganisms, so it had better be sure that what it's encountering is indeed foreign and in need of destruction, otherwise it may end up killing its own cells by friendly fire. As with hemostasis, it's important that the immune system only turn on when it's needed and turn off and stay off when it's not.
After determining that there is a microbial invasion going on, the second task of the immune system is to send out messages so that it can bring other forces to the field. This involves releasing chemicals that not only increase the blood flow to the site of infection, allowing immune cells and proteins to leak out of the blood through the capillaries, but attracts them to the battlefield as well. This causes the area around the infection to swell up and become red -- what we call inflammation.
In addition to rallying the troops, the third task of the immune system is to provide information about the whereabouts and nature of the enemy to those in reserve. This is accomplished by some of the first responder immune cells snipping off pieces of the dead microbes and sending them to the forces in reserve so that they can better prepare for what's awaiting them.
Finally, once the weapons of the immune system have been brought to the site of infection, it's up to them to wound or kill the invading force to prevent the infection from spreading further. The immune cells and proteins involved have many different weapons at their disposal to accomplish this task.
As with most military operations, the body's immune system has regular and specialized forces. The regular forces make up what is called the innate (natural) immune system. It's the microbial defense system with which everyone is born and it is the first to encounter the enemy, reacting within minutes. But this system, on its own, is usually not able to protect the body from overwhelming infection. Many pathogenic microorganisms have the ability to remain invisible and resistant to its strategies, allowing them to proliferate and spread throughout the body.
The specialized forces are usually needed to bolster and improve the effects of the innate immune system. Together, they are called the adaptive (acquired) immune system. This system usually requires a few days to adjust to the idiosyncrasies of the invading microbes. But when it swings into action, it provides extra intelligence, firepower, and precision accuracy that usually allow it and the innate immune system to get the job done. In contrast to the innate immune system, which is present at birth, the adaptive immune system develops over time as the body is exposed to more and more different microbes in its environment.
Now that you have a general idea of how the immune system works, we will press on. Next time, we'll look at the first responders of the innate immune system and how they do their jobs. Comparing how our immune system works to a military exercise in which an enemy must be tracked down, identified, and destroyed is a very accurate analogy.
Evolutionary biologists usually point to the ability of microorganisms to develop resistance to the body's immune system and medical therapies through genetic modification as evidence that life came about by chance and the laws of nature alone. However, this assumes the presence of the hardware needed not only to survive, but also to reproduce. Once you have the system in place, it's obvious that life can change over time, which is all that the word evolution denotes. However, the ability of life to change over time doesn't necessarily mean, as evolutionary biologists suggest, that it came about by chance and the forces of nature alone. One need only consider what it takes for the body to stay alive to recognize that important truth.
Howard Glicksman January 14, 2016 6:20 PM
Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News is delighted to offer this series, "The Designed Body." For the complete series, see here Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.
The body is made up of matter organized into trillions of cells that make up its tissues and organs. Since all matter must follow the laws of nature, this means that the body must do the same. In earlier articles I have shown that the body must overcome the laws of nature to survive. The sodium-potassium pumps, for example, are needed to allow each cell to control its volume and chemical content by resisting diffusion and osmosis. There must be enough albumin in the blood to resist the natural force of hydrostatic pressure and maintain blood volume and flow to the tissues. The sympathetic nervous system must increase the cardiac output and peripheral vascular resistance to elevate the blood pressure sufficiently to counteract gravity when we stand up.
With the emergence of life, not only did the cellular and organic make-up of the body require specific innovations to overcome the laws of nature and survive, it also had to learn how to deal with what it encountered in its environment. Life does not take place in a vacuum or in the imaginations of evolutionary biologists. Hemostasis and the clots it forms allow the body to prevent itself from bleeding to death when it is bumped, scraped, or cut. And the bones, muscles, and nerves work together so the body can detect danger and avoid or defend itself from it.
In my last article I showed that the body is always being exposed to microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi, which are present in nature but are too small to see with the naked eye. If these microbes invade the body and become widespread, they can cause a lot of damage. We saw that the first line of defense against infection is the skin and the epithelial tissues that line the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and genitourinary tracts.
If microbes breach these passive barriers and enter the tissues, the second line of defense swings into action. This is called the immune system, and it consists of numerous different cells and proteins that work together to fight and usually defeat the invading force. For our earliest ancestors to survive long enough to reproduce, they would have needed this two-pronged defense. Neither the passive barriers that protect the underlying tissues, nor the immune system, is capable, on its own, of protecting the body from life-threatening infection. They both have to be present and in working order .
In ancient times, when invaders penetrated the surrounding protective wall of a town, the defenders generally had four important tasks to perform very quickly. The first was to detect and positively identify the enemy. The second was to sound the alarm so others could help join in the defense. The third was to provide information on the enemy to those in reserve. And the fourth was to repel, wound, or kill the intruders to protect the residents. Similarly, once microbes get past the epithelium and penetrate into the tissues below, the body's immune defense must have the ability to perform these same four important tasks as well.
The first requires that the cells and proteins of the immune system have a way of detecting the presence of the microbes and be able to identify them as an invading force that needs to be destroyed. In other words, are these cells host cells (self), or foreign cells (not self)? The job of the immune system is to kill invading microorganisms, so it had better be sure that what it's encountering is indeed foreign and in need of destruction, otherwise it may end up killing its own cells by friendly fire. As with hemostasis, it's important that the immune system only turn on when it's needed and turn off and stay off when it's not.
After determining that there is a microbial invasion going on, the second task of the immune system is to send out messages so that it can bring other forces to the field. This involves releasing chemicals that not only increase the blood flow to the site of infection, allowing immune cells and proteins to leak out of the blood through the capillaries, but attracts them to the battlefield as well. This causes the area around the infection to swell up and become red -- what we call inflammation.
In addition to rallying the troops, the third task of the immune system is to provide information about the whereabouts and nature of the enemy to those in reserve. This is accomplished by some of the first responder immune cells snipping off pieces of the dead microbes and sending them to the forces in reserve so that they can better prepare for what's awaiting them.
Finally, once the weapons of the immune system have been brought to the site of infection, it's up to them to wound or kill the invading force to prevent the infection from spreading further. The immune cells and proteins involved have many different weapons at their disposal to accomplish this task.
As with most military operations, the body's immune system has regular and specialized forces. The regular forces make up what is called the innate (natural) immune system. It's the microbial defense system with which everyone is born and it is the first to encounter the enemy, reacting within minutes. But this system, on its own, is usually not able to protect the body from overwhelming infection. Many pathogenic microorganisms have the ability to remain invisible and resistant to its strategies, allowing them to proliferate and spread throughout the body.
The specialized forces are usually needed to bolster and improve the effects of the innate immune system. Together, they are called the adaptive (acquired) immune system. This system usually requires a few days to adjust to the idiosyncrasies of the invading microbes. But when it swings into action, it provides extra intelligence, firepower, and precision accuracy that usually allow it and the innate immune system to get the job done. In contrast to the innate immune system, which is present at birth, the adaptive immune system develops over time as the body is exposed to more and more different microbes in its environment.
Now that you have a general idea of how the immune system works, we will press on. Next time, we'll look at the first responders of the innate immune system and how they do their jobs. Comparing how our immune system works to a military exercise in which an enemy must be tracked down, identified, and destroyed is a very accurate analogy.
Evolutionary biologists usually point to the ability of microorganisms to develop resistance to the body's immune system and medical therapies through genetic modification as evidence that life came about by chance and the laws of nature alone. However, this assumes the presence of the hardware needed not only to survive, but also to reproduce. Once you have the system in place, it's obvious that life can change over time, which is all that the word evolution denotes. However, the ability of life to change over time doesn't necessarily mean, as evolutionary biologists suggest, that it came about by chance and the forces of nature alone. One need only consider what it takes for the body to stay alive to recognize that important truth.
Yet more on the climate change debate:Pros and Cons.
Pro & Con Arguments: "Is Human Activity Primarily Responsible for Global Climate Change?"
PRO Human Causation
Overwhelming scientific consensus says human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. The 2010 Anderegg study found that 97-98% of climate researchers publishing most actively in their field agree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. The study also found that the expertise of researchers unconvinced of human-caused climate change is "substantially below" that of researchers who agree that human activity is primarily responsible for climate change. [7] The 2013 Cook review of 11,944 peer-reviewed studies on climate change found that only 78 studies (0.7%) explicitly rejected the position that humans are responsible for global warming. [1] A separate review of 13,950 peer-reviewed studies on climate change found only 24 that rejected human-caused global warming. [5] A survey by German Scientists Bray and Von Storch found that 83.5% of climate scientists believe human activity is causing "most of recent" global climate change. [172] A separate survey in 2011 also found that 84% of earth, space, atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrological scientists surveyed said that human-induced global warming is occurring. [6]
Rising levels of human-produced gases released into the atmosphere create a greenhouse effect that traps heat and causes global warming. As sunlight hits the earth, some of the warmth is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (NO2). These gases trap heat and cause the planet to warm through a process called the greenhouse effect. [8] Since 1751 about 337 billion metric tons of CO2 have been released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels and cement production, [9] increasing atmospheric CO2 from the pre-industrial level of about 280 ppm (parts per million), to a high of 400 ppm in 2013. [10] Methane, which is increasing in the atmosphere due to agriculture and fossil fuel production, traps 84 times as much heat as CO2 for the first 20 years it is in the atmosphere, [11] and is responsible for about one-fifth of global warming since 1750. [12] Nitrous oxide, primarily released through agricultural practices, traps 300 times as much heat as CO2. [13] Over the 20th century, as the concentrations of CO2, CH4, and NO2 increased in the atmosphere, [13][14] the earth warmed by approximately 1.4°F. [99]
The rise in atmospheric CO2 over the last century was clearly caused by human activity, as it occurred at a rate much faster than natural climate changes could produce. Over the past 650,000 years, atmospheric CO2 levels did not rise above 300 ppm until the mid-20th century. [100] Atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen from about 317 ppm in 1958 to 400 ppm in 2013. [10] CO2 levels are estimated to reach 450 ppm by the year 2040. [15] According to the Scripps Institution of Oceanology, the "extreme speed at which carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing is unprecedented. An increase of 10 parts per million might have needed 1,000 years or more to come to pass during ancient climate change events." [17] Some climate models predict that by the end of the 21st century an additional 5°F-10°F of warming will occur. [16]
The specific type of CO2 that is increasing in earth's atmosphere can be directly connected to human activity. CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal [18] can be differentiated in the atmosphere from natural CO2 due to its specific isotopic ratio. [101] According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 20th century measurements of CO2 isotope ratios in the atmosphere confirm that rising CO2 levels are the result of human activity, not natural processes such as ocean outgassing, volcanic activity, or release from other "carbon sinks." [102] US greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in 2012 totaled 6.5 million metric tons, [19] which is equivalent to about 78.3 billion shipping containers filled with greenhouse gases. [20]
Average temperatures on earth have increased at a rate far faster than can be explained by natural climate changes. A 2008 study compared data from tree rings, ice cores, and corals over the past millennium with recent temperature records. The study created the famous "hockey stick" graph, showing that the rise in earth's temperature over the preceding decade had occurred at a rate faster than any warming period over the last 1,700 years. [23] In 2012 the Berkeley scientists found that the average temperature of the earth’s land increased 2.5°F over 250 years (1750-2000), with 1.5°F of that increase in the last 50 years. [21] Lead researcher Richard A. Muller, PhD, said "it appears likely that essentially all of this increase [in temperature] results from the human emission of greenhouse gases." [22] In 2013, a surface temperature study published in Science found that global warming over the past 100 years has proceeded at a rate faster than at any time in the past 11,300 years. [3] According to the IPCC’s 2014 Synthesis Report, human actions are "extremely likely" (95-100% confidence) to have been the main cause of 20th century global warming, and the surface temperature warming since the 1950s is "unprecedented over decades to millennia." [24]
Natural changes in the sun's activity cannot explain 20th century global warming. According to a Dec. 2013 study in Nature Geoscience, the sun has had only a "minor effect" on the Northern Hemisphere climate over the past 1,000 years, and global warming from human-produced greenhouse gases has been the primary cause of climate change since 1900. [26] Another 2013 study found that solar activity could not have contributed to more than 10% of the observed global warming over the 20th century. [27] Measurements in the upper atmosphere from 1979-2009 show the sun's energy has gone up and down in cycles, with no net increase. [28] According to a 2013 IPCC report, there is "high confidence" (8 out of 10 chance) that changes in the sun's radiation could not have caused the increase in the earth's surface temperature from 1986-2008. [29] Although warming is occurring in the lower atmosphere (troposphere), the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) is actually cooling. If the sun were driving global warming, there would be warming in the stratosphere also, not cooling. [103]
Global warming caused by human-produced greenhouse gases is causing the Arctic ice cap to melt at an increasing rate. From 1953–2006, Arctic sea ice declined 7.8% per decade. Between 1979 and 2006, the decline was 9.1% each decade. [105] As of 2014, Arctic sea ice was being lost at a rate of 13.3% per decade. [163] As the Arctic ice cover continues to decrease, the amount of the sun’s heat reflected by the ice back into space also decreases. This positive-feedback loop amplifies global warming at a rate even faster than previous climate models had predicted. [30] Some studies predict the Arctic could become nearly ice free sometime between 2020-2060. [164]
Sea levels are rising at an unprecedented rate due to global warming. As human-produced greenhouse gases warm the planet, sea levels are rising due to thermal expansion of warming ocean waters as well as melt water from receding glaciers and the polar ice cap. [165] According to the IPCC, there has been a "substantial" human contribution to the global mean sea-level rise since the 1970s, and there is "high confidence" (8 out of 10 chance) that the rate of sea-level rise over the last half century has accelerated faster than it has over the previous 2,000 years. [29] A 2006 study found that "significant acceleration" of sea-level rise occurred from 1870 to 2004. [106] Between 1961 and 2003 global sea levels rose 8 inches. [102] An Oct. 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the rate of sea level rise over the past century is unprecedented over the last 6,000 years. [32] [33] A separate Oct. 2014 study said that the global sea level is likely to rise 31 inches by 2100, with a worst case scenario rise of 6 feet. [34] Climate Central predicts that 147 to 216 million people live in areas that will be below sea level or regular flood areas by the end of the century if human-produced greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate. [35]
Ocean acidity levels are increasing at an unprecedented rate that can only be explained by human activity. As excess human-produced CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans, the acidity level of the water increases. Acidity levels in the oceans are 25-30% higher than prior to human fossil fuel use. [107] According to a 2014 US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, oceans have absorbed about 30% of the CO2 emitted by humans over the past 200 years, and ocean acidity could rise approximately 100-200 percent above preindustrial levels by 2100. [36] According to a 2013 report from the World Meteorological Organization, the current acceleration in the rate of ocean acidification "appears unprecedented" over the last 300 million years. [37] High ocean acidity levels threaten marine species, [16] and slows the growth of coral reefs. [38] According to a 2014 report by the Convention on Biological Diversity, "it is now nearly inevitable" that within 50-100 years continued human produced CO2 emissions will increase ocean acidity to levels that "will have widespread impacts, mostly deleterious, on marine organisms and ecosystems." [39]
Ocean temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate due to global warming, and are causing additional climate changes. The IPCC stated in a 2013 report that due to human-caused global warming, it is "virtually certain" (99-100% probability) that the upper ocean warmed between 1971 and 2010. [29] An Oct. 2014 Nature Climate Change study said that the oceans are the "dominant reservoir of heat uptake in the climate system." [40] A separate Oct. 2014 study found that the oceans absorb more than 90% of the heat generated by human-caused global warming. [41] Since 1970 the upper ocean (above 700 meters) has been warming 24-55% faster than previous studies had predicted. [41] A May 2013 study published in Geophysical Research Letters found that between 1958-2009 the rates of warming in the lower ocean (below 700m) "appear to be unprecedented." [42] According to an Oct. 2013 study, the middle depths of the Pacific Ocean have warmed "15 times faster in the last 60 years than they did during apparent natural warming cycles in the previous 10,000." [43] Warmer ocean waters can harm coral reefs and impact many species including krill, which are vital to the marine food chain and which reproduce significantly less in warmer water. [166] Warming oceans also contribute to sea level rise due to thermal expansion, and warmer ocean waters can add to the intensity of storm systems. [167]
Glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates due to global warming, causing additional climate changes. About a quarter of the globe's glacial loss from 1851-2010, and approximately two thirds of glacial loss between 1991-2010, is attributable directly to global warming caused by human-produced greenhouse gases. [45] According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, global warming from human-produced greenhouse gases is a primary cause of the "unprecedented" retreat of glaciers around the world since the early 20th century. [44] Since 1980 glaciers worldwide have lost nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in average thickness. [110] According to a 2013 IPCC report, "glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide" over the prior two decades, and there is "high confidence" (about an 8 out of 10 chance) that Northern Hemisphere spring snow continues to decrease. [29] If the glaciers forming the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, global sea levels could increase by up to 20 feet. [168] Melting glaciers also change the climate of the surrounding region. With the loss of summer glacial melt water, the temperatures in rivers and lakes increase. According to the US Geological Service, this disruption can include the "extinction of temperature sensitive aquatic species." [169]
Human-caused global warming is changing weather systems and making heat waves and droughts more intense and more frequent. The May 2014 National Climate Assessment report said human-caused climate changes, such as increased heat waves and drought, "are visible in every state." [16] A Sep. 2014 American Meteorological Society study found that human-caused climate change "greatly increased" (up to 10 times) the risk for extreme heat waves in 2013. [46] According to an Aug. 2012 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there is a "high degree of confidence" that the Texas and Oklahoma heat waves and drought of 2011, and heat waves and drought in Moscow in 2010, "were a consequence of global warming" and that "extreme anomalies" in weather are becoming more common as a direct consequence of human-caused climate change. [47] A 2015 study found that globally, 75% of extremely hot days are attributable to warming caused by human activity. [174]
Dramatic changes in precipitation, such as heavier storms and less snow, are another sign that humans are causing global climate change. As human-produced greenhouse gases heat the planet, increased humidity (water vapor in the atmosphere) results. Water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas. [112] In a process known as a positive feedback loop, more warming causes more humidity which causes even more warming. [113] Higher humidity levels also cause changes in precipitation. According to a 2013 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the recorded changes in precipitation over land and oceans "are unlikely to arise purely due to natural climate variability." [48] Higher temperatures from global warming are also causing some mountainous areas to receive rain rather than snow. According to researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, up to 60% of the changes in river flow, winter air temperature, and snow pack in the western United States (1950-1999) were human-induced. [111] Since 1991, heavy precipitation events have been 30% above the 1901-1960 average in the Northeast, Midwest, and upper Great Plains regions. [16] A 2015 study found that global warming caused by human actions has increased extreme precipitation events by 18% across the globe, and that if temperatures continue to rise an increase of 40% can be expected. [174]
Permafrost is melting at unprecedented rates due to global warming, causing further climate changes. According to a 2013 IPCC report there is "high confidence" (about an 8 out of 10 chance) that anthropogenic global warming is causing permafrost, a subsurface layer of frozen soil, to melt in high-latitude regions and in high-elevation regions. [49] As permafrost melts it releases methane, a greenhouse gas that absorbs 84 times more heat than CO2 for the first 20 years it is in the atmosphere, creating even more global warming in a positive feedback loop. [50][51] By the end of the 21st century, warming temperatures in the Arctic will cause a 30%-70% decline in permafrost. [52] According to a 2012 report, as human-caused global warming continues, Arctic air temperatures are expected to increase at twice the global rate, increasing the rate of permafrost melt, changing the local hydrology, and impacting critical habitat for native species and migratory birds. [53] According to the 2014 National Climate Assessment, some climate models suggest that near-surface permafrost will be "lost entirely" from large parts of Alaska by the end of the 21st century. [16]
CON Human Causation
More than one thousand scientists disagree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. In 2010 Climate Depot released a report featuring more than 1,000 scientists, several of them former UN IPCC scientists, who disagreed that humans are primarily responsible for global climate change. [55] The Cook review [1] of 11,944 peer-reviewed studies found 66.4% of the studies had no stated position on anthropogenic global warming, and while 32.6% of the studies implied or stated that humans are contributing to climate change, only 65 papers (0.5%) explicitly stated "that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming." [54] A 2012 Purdue University survey found that 47% of climatologists challenge the idea that humans are primarily responsible for climate change and instead believe that climate change is caused by an equal combination of humans and the environment (37%), mostly by the environment (5%), or that there’s not enough information to say (5%). [173] In 2014 a group of 15 scientists dismissed the US National Climate Assessment as a "masterpiece of marketing," that was "grossly flawed," and called the NCA’s assertion of human-caused climate change "NOT true." [56]
Earth's climate has always warmed and cooled, and the 20th century rise in global temperature is within the bounds of natural temperature fluctuations over the past 3,000 years. Although the planet has warmed 1-1.4°F over the 20th century, it is within the +/- 5°F range of the past 3,000 years. [114] A 2003 study by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found that "many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium." [115] A 2005 study published in Nature found that "high temperatures - similar to those observed in the twentieth century before 1990 - occurred around AD 1000 to 1100" in the Northern Hemisphere. [116] A 2013 study published in Boreas found that summer temperatures during the Roman Empire and Medieval periods were "consistently higher" than temperatures during the 20th century. [59] According to a 2010 study in the Chinese Science Bulletin, the recent global warming period of the 20th century is the result of a natural 21-year temperature oscillation, and will give way to a "new cool period in the 2030s." [74]
Rising levels of atmospheric CO2 do not necessarily cause global warming, which contradicts the core thesis of human-caused climate change. Earth's climate record shows that warming has preceded, not followed, a rise in CO2. According to a 2003 study published in Science, measurements of ice core samples show that over the last four climactic cycles (past 240,000 years), periods of natural global warming preceded global increases in CO2. [117] In 2010 the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study of the earth's climate 460-445 million years ago which found that an intense period of glaciation, not warming, occurred when CO2 levels were 5 times higher than they are today. [4] According to ecologist and former Director of Greenpeace International Patrick Moore, PhD, "there is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia." [60]
Human-produced CO2 is re-absorbed by oceans, forests, and other "carbon sinks," negating any climate changes. According to a 2011 study published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Science, many climate models that predict additional global warming to occur from CO2 emissions "exaggerate positive feedbacks and even show positive feedbacks when actual feedbacks are negative." [75] About 50% of the CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities has already been re-absorbed by the earth’s carbon sinks. [118] From 2002-2011, 26% of human-caused CO2 emissions were absorbed specifically by the world’s oceans. [61] A 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found evidence that forests are increasing their growth rates in response to elevated levels of CO2, [62] which will in turn, lower atmospheric CO2 levels in a negative feedback. According to an Aug. 2012 study in Nature, the rate of global carbon uptake by the earth's carbon sinks, such as its forests and oceans, doubled from 1960-2010 and continues to increase. [64]
CO2 is already saturated in earth’s atmosphere, and more CO2, manmade or natural, will have little impact on climate. As CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise, the amount of additional warming caused by the increased concentration becomes less and less pronounced. [65] According to Senate testimony by William Happer, PhD, Professor of Physics at Princeton University, "[a]dditional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. The technical jargon for this is that the CO2 absorption band is nearly 'saturated' at current CO2 levels." [66] According to the Heartland Institute's 2013 Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report, "it is likely rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations will have little impact on future climate." [67]
Global warming and cooling are primarily caused by fluctuations in the sun's heat (solar forcing), not by human activity. Over the past 10,000 years, solar minima (reduced sun spot activity) have been "accompanied by sharp climate changes." [68] Between 1900 and 2000 solar irradiance increased 0.19%, and correlated with the rise in US surface temperatures over the 20th century. [114] According to a 2007 study published in Energy & Environment, "variations in solar activity and not the burning of fossil fuels are the direct cause of the observed multiyear variations in climatic responses." [69] In a 2012 study by Willie Soon, PhD, Physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a strong correlation between solar radiation and temperatures in the Arctic over the past 130 years was identified. [70] According to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, "up to 70% of the observed post-1850 climate change and warming could be associated to multiple solar cycles." [71]
The rate of global warming has slowed over the last decade even though atmospheric CO2 continues to increase. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognized a slowdown in global warming over the past 15 years in its 2013 report. [29] According to the Heartland Institute's 2013 NIPCC report, the earth "has not warmed significantly for the past 16 years despite an 8% increase in atmospheric CO2." [67] In Aug. 2014 a study in the Open Journal of Statistics analyzed surface temperature records and satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere and confirmed that this slowdown in global warming has occurred. [72] According to Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Richard Lindzen, PhD, the IPCC's "excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean. However, this is simply an admission that the [climate] models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans..." [73]
Predictions of accelerating human-caused climate change are based upon computerized climate models that are inadequate and incorrect. Climate models have been unable to simulate major known features of past climate such as the ice ages or the very warm climates of the Miocene, Eocene, and Cretaceous periods. If models cannot replicate past climate changes they should not be trusted to predict future climate changes. [58] A 2011 Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Science study using observational data rather than computer climate models concluded that "the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity" and overestimate how fast the earth will warm as CO2 levels increase. [75] Two other studies using observational data found that IPCC projections of future global warming are too high. [76] [97] In a 2014 article, climatologist and former NASA scientist Roy Spencer, PhD, concluded that 95% of climate models have "over-forecast the warming trend since 1979." [77] According to Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Winnipeg, Tim Ball, PhD, "IPCC computer climate models are the vehicles of deception… [T]hey create the results they are designed to produce." [78]
Sea levels have been steadily rising for thousands of years, and the increase has nothing to do with humans. A 2014 report by the Global Warming Policy Foundation found that a slow global sea level rise has been ongoing for the last 10,000 years. [79] When the earth began coming out of the Pleistocene Ice Age 18,000 years ago, sea levels were about 400 feet lower than they are today and have been steadily rising ever since. [60] According to Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Judith Curry, PhD "it is clear that natural variability has dominated sea level rise during the 20th century, with changes in ocean heat content and changes in precipitation patterns." [80] Freeman Dyson, Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics and Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, has stated that there is "no evidence" that rising sea levels are due to anthropogenic climate change. [81]
The acidity levels of the oceans are within past natural levels, and the current rise in acidity is a natural fluctuation, not the result of human caused climate change. [120] The pH of average ocean surface water is 8.1 and has only decreased 0.1 since the beginning of the industrial revolution (neutral is pH 7, acid is below pH 7). [121] In 2010 Science published a study of ocean acidity levels over the past 15 million years, finding that the "samples record surface seawater pH values that are within the range observed in the oceans today." [82] Increased atmospheric CO2 absorbed by the oceans results in higher rates of photosynthesis and faster growth of ocean plants and phytoplankton, which increases pH levels keeping the water alkaline, not acidic. [60] According to a 2010 paper by the Science and Public Policy Institute, "our harmless emissions of trifling quantities of carbon dioxide cannot possibly acidify the oceans." [63]
Glaciers have been growing and receding for thousands of years due to natural causes, not human activity. The IPCC predicted that Himalayan glaciers would likely melt away by 2035, a prediction they disavowed in 2010. [83] In 2014 a study of study of 2,181 Himalayan glaciers from 2000-2011 showed that 86.6% of the glaciers were not receding. [84] According to a 2013 study of ice cores published in Nature Geoscience, the current melting of glaciers in Western Antarctica is due to "atmospheric circulation changes" that have "caused rapid warming over the West Antarctic Ice Sheet" and cannot be directly attributed to human caused climate change. [85] According to one of the study authors, "[i]f we could look back at this region of Antarctica in the 1940s and 1830s, we would find that the regional climate would look a lot like it does today, and I think we also would find the glaciers retreating much as they are today." [86] According to Christian Schlüchter, Professor of Geology at the University of Bern, 4,000 year old tree remains have been found beneath retreating glaciers in the Swiss Alps, indicating that they were previously glacier-free. According to Schlüchter, the current retreat of glaciers in the Alps began in the mid-19th century, before large amounts of human caused CO2 had entered the atmosphere. [87]
Deep ocean currents, not human activity, are a primary driver of natural climate warming and cooling cycles. Changes in ocean currents are primarily responsible for the melting Greenland ice sheet, Arctic sea ice, and Arctic permafrost. Over the 20th century there have been two Arctic warming periods with a cooling period (1940-1970) in between. According to a 2009 study in Geophysical Research Letters, natural shifts in the ocean currents are the major cause of these climate changes, not human-generated greenhouse gases. [124] According to William Gray, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, most of the climate changes over the last century are natural and "due to multi-decadal and multi-century changes in deep global ocean currents." [122] Global cooling from 1940 to the 1970s, and warming from the 1970s to 2008, coincided with fluctuations in ocean currents and cloud cover driven by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) - a naturally occurring rearrangement in atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. [123] According to a 2014 article by Don Easterbrook, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University, the "PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977." [88]
Increased hurricane activity and other extreme weather events are a result of natural weather patterns, not human-caused climate change. According to a 2013 report from the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University, the increase in human-produced CO2 over the past century has had "little or no significant effect" on global tropical cyclone activity. The report further states that specific hurricanes, including Sandy, Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, and Ike, were not a direct consequence of human-caused global warming. [89] Between 1995-2015 increased hurricane activity (including Katrina) was recorded, however, according to the NOAA, it was not the result of human-induced climate change; it was the result of cyclical tropical cyclone patterns, driven primarily by natural ocean currents. [125] Many types of recorded extreme weather events over the past half-century have actually become less frequent and less severe. [93] Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Judith Curry, PhD, states that she is "unconvinced by any of the arguments that I have seen that attributes a single extreme weather event, a cluster of extreme weather events, or statistics of extreme weather events" to human-caused climate change. [90] Richard Lindzen, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also states that there is a lack of evidence connecting extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, or floods, to human-caused global warming. [92]
On taking earth's temperature.
PRO Human Causation
Overwhelming scientific consensus says human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. The 2010 Anderegg study found that 97-98% of climate researchers publishing most actively in their field agree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. The study also found that the expertise of researchers unconvinced of human-caused climate change is "substantially below" that of researchers who agree that human activity is primarily responsible for climate change. [7] The 2013 Cook review of 11,944 peer-reviewed studies on climate change found that only 78 studies (0.7%) explicitly rejected the position that humans are responsible for global warming. [1] A separate review of 13,950 peer-reviewed studies on climate change found only 24 that rejected human-caused global warming. [5] A survey by German Scientists Bray and Von Storch found that 83.5% of climate scientists believe human activity is causing "most of recent" global climate change. [172] A separate survey in 2011 also found that 84% of earth, space, atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrological scientists surveyed said that human-induced global warming is occurring. [6]
Rising levels of human-produced gases released into the atmosphere create a greenhouse effect that traps heat and causes global warming. As sunlight hits the earth, some of the warmth is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (NO2). These gases trap heat and cause the planet to warm through a process called the greenhouse effect. [8] Since 1751 about 337 billion metric tons of CO2 have been released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels and cement production, [9] increasing atmospheric CO2 from the pre-industrial level of about 280 ppm (parts per million), to a high of 400 ppm in 2013. [10] Methane, which is increasing in the atmosphere due to agriculture and fossil fuel production, traps 84 times as much heat as CO2 for the first 20 years it is in the atmosphere, [11] and is responsible for about one-fifth of global warming since 1750. [12] Nitrous oxide, primarily released through agricultural practices, traps 300 times as much heat as CO2. [13] Over the 20th century, as the concentrations of CO2, CH4, and NO2 increased in the atmosphere, [13][14] the earth warmed by approximately 1.4°F. [99]
The rise in atmospheric CO2 over the last century was clearly caused by human activity, as it occurred at a rate much faster than natural climate changes could produce. Over the past 650,000 years, atmospheric CO2 levels did not rise above 300 ppm until the mid-20th century. [100] Atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen from about 317 ppm in 1958 to 400 ppm in 2013. [10] CO2 levels are estimated to reach 450 ppm by the year 2040. [15] According to the Scripps Institution of Oceanology, the "extreme speed at which carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing is unprecedented. An increase of 10 parts per million might have needed 1,000 years or more to come to pass during ancient climate change events." [17] Some climate models predict that by the end of the 21st century an additional 5°F-10°F of warming will occur. [16]
The specific type of CO2 that is increasing in earth's atmosphere can be directly connected to human activity. CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal [18] can be differentiated in the atmosphere from natural CO2 due to its specific isotopic ratio. [101] According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 20th century measurements of CO2 isotope ratios in the atmosphere confirm that rising CO2 levels are the result of human activity, not natural processes such as ocean outgassing, volcanic activity, or release from other "carbon sinks." [102] US greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in 2012 totaled 6.5 million metric tons, [19] which is equivalent to about 78.3 billion shipping containers filled with greenhouse gases. [20]
Average temperatures on earth have increased at a rate far faster than can be explained by natural climate changes. A 2008 study compared data from tree rings, ice cores, and corals over the past millennium with recent temperature records. The study created the famous "hockey stick" graph, showing that the rise in earth's temperature over the preceding decade had occurred at a rate faster than any warming period over the last 1,700 years. [23] In 2012 the Berkeley scientists found that the average temperature of the earth’s land increased 2.5°F over 250 years (1750-2000), with 1.5°F of that increase in the last 50 years. [21] Lead researcher Richard A. Muller, PhD, said "it appears likely that essentially all of this increase [in temperature] results from the human emission of greenhouse gases." [22] In 2013, a surface temperature study published in Science found that global warming over the past 100 years has proceeded at a rate faster than at any time in the past 11,300 years. [3] According to the IPCC’s 2014 Synthesis Report, human actions are "extremely likely" (95-100% confidence) to have been the main cause of 20th century global warming, and the surface temperature warming since the 1950s is "unprecedented over decades to millennia." [24]
Natural changes in the sun's activity cannot explain 20th century global warming. According to a Dec. 2013 study in Nature Geoscience, the sun has had only a "minor effect" on the Northern Hemisphere climate over the past 1,000 years, and global warming from human-produced greenhouse gases has been the primary cause of climate change since 1900. [26] Another 2013 study found that solar activity could not have contributed to more than 10% of the observed global warming over the 20th century. [27] Measurements in the upper atmosphere from 1979-2009 show the sun's energy has gone up and down in cycles, with no net increase. [28] According to a 2013 IPCC report, there is "high confidence" (8 out of 10 chance) that changes in the sun's radiation could not have caused the increase in the earth's surface temperature from 1986-2008. [29] Although warming is occurring in the lower atmosphere (troposphere), the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) is actually cooling. If the sun were driving global warming, there would be warming in the stratosphere also, not cooling. [103]
Global warming caused by human-produced greenhouse gases is causing the Arctic ice cap to melt at an increasing rate. From 1953–2006, Arctic sea ice declined 7.8% per decade. Between 1979 and 2006, the decline was 9.1% each decade. [105] As of 2014, Arctic sea ice was being lost at a rate of 13.3% per decade. [163] As the Arctic ice cover continues to decrease, the amount of the sun’s heat reflected by the ice back into space also decreases. This positive-feedback loop amplifies global warming at a rate even faster than previous climate models had predicted. [30] Some studies predict the Arctic could become nearly ice free sometime between 2020-2060. [164]
Sea levels are rising at an unprecedented rate due to global warming. As human-produced greenhouse gases warm the planet, sea levels are rising due to thermal expansion of warming ocean waters as well as melt water from receding glaciers and the polar ice cap. [165] According to the IPCC, there has been a "substantial" human contribution to the global mean sea-level rise since the 1970s, and there is "high confidence" (8 out of 10 chance) that the rate of sea-level rise over the last half century has accelerated faster than it has over the previous 2,000 years. [29] A 2006 study found that "significant acceleration" of sea-level rise occurred from 1870 to 2004. [106] Between 1961 and 2003 global sea levels rose 8 inches. [102] An Oct. 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the rate of sea level rise over the past century is unprecedented over the last 6,000 years. [32] [33] A separate Oct. 2014 study said that the global sea level is likely to rise 31 inches by 2100, with a worst case scenario rise of 6 feet. [34] Climate Central predicts that 147 to 216 million people live in areas that will be below sea level or regular flood areas by the end of the century if human-produced greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate. [35]
Ocean acidity levels are increasing at an unprecedented rate that can only be explained by human activity. As excess human-produced CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans, the acidity level of the water increases. Acidity levels in the oceans are 25-30% higher than prior to human fossil fuel use. [107] According to a 2014 US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, oceans have absorbed about 30% of the CO2 emitted by humans over the past 200 years, and ocean acidity could rise approximately 100-200 percent above preindustrial levels by 2100. [36] According to a 2013 report from the World Meteorological Organization, the current acceleration in the rate of ocean acidification "appears unprecedented" over the last 300 million years. [37] High ocean acidity levels threaten marine species, [16] and slows the growth of coral reefs. [38] According to a 2014 report by the Convention on Biological Diversity, "it is now nearly inevitable" that within 50-100 years continued human produced CO2 emissions will increase ocean acidity to levels that "will have widespread impacts, mostly deleterious, on marine organisms and ecosystems." [39]
Ocean temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate due to global warming, and are causing additional climate changes. The IPCC stated in a 2013 report that due to human-caused global warming, it is "virtually certain" (99-100% probability) that the upper ocean warmed between 1971 and 2010. [29] An Oct. 2014 Nature Climate Change study said that the oceans are the "dominant reservoir of heat uptake in the climate system." [40] A separate Oct. 2014 study found that the oceans absorb more than 90% of the heat generated by human-caused global warming. [41] Since 1970 the upper ocean (above 700 meters) has been warming 24-55% faster than previous studies had predicted. [41] A May 2013 study published in Geophysical Research Letters found that between 1958-2009 the rates of warming in the lower ocean (below 700m) "appear to be unprecedented." [42] According to an Oct. 2013 study, the middle depths of the Pacific Ocean have warmed "15 times faster in the last 60 years than they did during apparent natural warming cycles in the previous 10,000." [43] Warmer ocean waters can harm coral reefs and impact many species including krill, which are vital to the marine food chain and which reproduce significantly less in warmer water. [166] Warming oceans also contribute to sea level rise due to thermal expansion, and warmer ocean waters can add to the intensity of storm systems. [167]
Glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates due to global warming, causing additional climate changes. About a quarter of the globe's glacial loss from 1851-2010, and approximately two thirds of glacial loss between 1991-2010, is attributable directly to global warming caused by human-produced greenhouse gases. [45] According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, global warming from human-produced greenhouse gases is a primary cause of the "unprecedented" retreat of glaciers around the world since the early 20th century. [44] Since 1980 glaciers worldwide have lost nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in average thickness. [110] According to a 2013 IPCC report, "glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide" over the prior two decades, and there is "high confidence" (about an 8 out of 10 chance) that Northern Hemisphere spring snow continues to decrease. [29] If the glaciers forming the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, global sea levels could increase by up to 20 feet. [168] Melting glaciers also change the climate of the surrounding region. With the loss of summer glacial melt water, the temperatures in rivers and lakes increase. According to the US Geological Service, this disruption can include the "extinction of temperature sensitive aquatic species." [169]
Human-caused global warming is changing weather systems and making heat waves and droughts more intense and more frequent. The May 2014 National Climate Assessment report said human-caused climate changes, such as increased heat waves and drought, "are visible in every state." [16] A Sep. 2014 American Meteorological Society study found that human-caused climate change "greatly increased" (up to 10 times) the risk for extreme heat waves in 2013. [46] According to an Aug. 2012 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there is a "high degree of confidence" that the Texas and Oklahoma heat waves and drought of 2011, and heat waves and drought in Moscow in 2010, "were a consequence of global warming" and that "extreme anomalies" in weather are becoming more common as a direct consequence of human-caused climate change. [47] A 2015 study found that globally, 75% of extremely hot days are attributable to warming caused by human activity. [174]
Dramatic changes in precipitation, such as heavier storms and less snow, are another sign that humans are causing global climate change. As human-produced greenhouse gases heat the planet, increased humidity (water vapor in the atmosphere) results. Water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas. [112] In a process known as a positive feedback loop, more warming causes more humidity which causes even more warming. [113] Higher humidity levels also cause changes in precipitation. According to a 2013 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the recorded changes in precipitation over land and oceans "are unlikely to arise purely due to natural climate variability." [48] Higher temperatures from global warming are also causing some mountainous areas to receive rain rather than snow. According to researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, up to 60% of the changes in river flow, winter air temperature, and snow pack in the western United States (1950-1999) were human-induced. [111] Since 1991, heavy precipitation events have been 30% above the 1901-1960 average in the Northeast, Midwest, and upper Great Plains regions. [16] A 2015 study found that global warming caused by human actions has increased extreme precipitation events by 18% across the globe, and that if temperatures continue to rise an increase of 40% can be expected. [174]
Permafrost is melting at unprecedented rates due to global warming, causing further climate changes. According to a 2013 IPCC report there is "high confidence" (about an 8 out of 10 chance) that anthropogenic global warming is causing permafrost, a subsurface layer of frozen soil, to melt in high-latitude regions and in high-elevation regions. [49] As permafrost melts it releases methane, a greenhouse gas that absorbs 84 times more heat than CO2 for the first 20 years it is in the atmosphere, creating even more global warming in a positive feedback loop. [50][51] By the end of the 21st century, warming temperatures in the Arctic will cause a 30%-70% decline in permafrost. [52] According to a 2012 report, as human-caused global warming continues, Arctic air temperatures are expected to increase at twice the global rate, increasing the rate of permafrost melt, changing the local hydrology, and impacting critical habitat for native species and migratory birds. [53] According to the 2014 National Climate Assessment, some climate models suggest that near-surface permafrost will be "lost entirely" from large parts of Alaska by the end of the 21st century. [16]
CON Human Causation
More than one thousand scientists disagree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. In 2010 Climate Depot released a report featuring more than 1,000 scientists, several of them former UN IPCC scientists, who disagreed that humans are primarily responsible for global climate change. [55] The Cook review [1] of 11,944 peer-reviewed studies found 66.4% of the studies had no stated position on anthropogenic global warming, and while 32.6% of the studies implied or stated that humans are contributing to climate change, only 65 papers (0.5%) explicitly stated "that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming." [54] A 2012 Purdue University survey found that 47% of climatologists challenge the idea that humans are primarily responsible for climate change and instead believe that climate change is caused by an equal combination of humans and the environment (37%), mostly by the environment (5%), or that there’s not enough information to say (5%). [173] In 2014 a group of 15 scientists dismissed the US National Climate Assessment as a "masterpiece of marketing," that was "grossly flawed," and called the NCA’s assertion of human-caused climate change "NOT true." [56]
Earth's climate has always warmed and cooled, and the 20th century rise in global temperature is within the bounds of natural temperature fluctuations over the past 3,000 years. Although the planet has warmed 1-1.4°F over the 20th century, it is within the +/- 5°F range of the past 3,000 years. [114] A 2003 study by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found that "many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium." [115] A 2005 study published in Nature found that "high temperatures - similar to those observed in the twentieth century before 1990 - occurred around AD 1000 to 1100" in the Northern Hemisphere. [116] A 2013 study published in Boreas found that summer temperatures during the Roman Empire and Medieval periods were "consistently higher" than temperatures during the 20th century. [59] According to a 2010 study in the Chinese Science Bulletin, the recent global warming period of the 20th century is the result of a natural 21-year temperature oscillation, and will give way to a "new cool period in the 2030s." [74]
Rising levels of atmospheric CO2 do not necessarily cause global warming, which contradicts the core thesis of human-caused climate change. Earth's climate record shows that warming has preceded, not followed, a rise in CO2. According to a 2003 study published in Science, measurements of ice core samples show that over the last four climactic cycles (past 240,000 years), periods of natural global warming preceded global increases in CO2. [117] In 2010 the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study of the earth's climate 460-445 million years ago which found that an intense period of glaciation, not warming, occurred when CO2 levels were 5 times higher than they are today. [4] According to ecologist and former Director of Greenpeace International Patrick Moore, PhD, "there is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia." [60]
Human-produced CO2 is re-absorbed by oceans, forests, and other "carbon sinks," negating any climate changes. According to a 2011 study published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Science, many climate models that predict additional global warming to occur from CO2 emissions "exaggerate positive feedbacks and even show positive feedbacks when actual feedbacks are negative." [75] About 50% of the CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities has already been re-absorbed by the earth’s carbon sinks. [118] From 2002-2011, 26% of human-caused CO2 emissions were absorbed specifically by the world’s oceans. [61] A 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found evidence that forests are increasing their growth rates in response to elevated levels of CO2, [62] which will in turn, lower atmospheric CO2 levels in a negative feedback. According to an Aug. 2012 study in Nature, the rate of global carbon uptake by the earth's carbon sinks, such as its forests and oceans, doubled from 1960-2010 and continues to increase. [64]
CO2 is already saturated in earth’s atmosphere, and more CO2, manmade or natural, will have little impact on climate. As CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise, the amount of additional warming caused by the increased concentration becomes less and less pronounced. [65] According to Senate testimony by William Happer, PhD, Professor of Physics at Princeton University, "[a]dditional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. The technical jargon for this is that the CO2 absorption band is nearly 'saturated' at current CO2 levels." [66] According to the Heartland Institute's 2013 Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report, "it is likely rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations will have little impact on future climate." [67]
Global warming and cooling are primarily caused by fluctuations in the sun's heat (solar forcing), not by human activity. Over the past 10,000 years, solar minima (reduced sun spot activity) have been "accompanied by sharp climate changes." [68] Between 1900 and 2000 solar irradiance increased 0.19%, and correlated with the rise in US surface temperatures over the 20th century. [114] According to a 2007 study published in Energy & Environment, "variations in solar activity and not the burning of fossil fuels are the direct cause of the observed multiyear variations in climatic responses." [69] In a 2012 study by Willie Soon, PhD, Physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a strong correlation between solar radiation and temperatures in the Arctic over the past 130 years was identified. [70] According to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, "up to 70% of the observed post-1850 climate change and warming could be associated to multiple solar cycles." [71]
The rate of global warming has slowed over the last decade even though atmospheric CO2 continues to increase. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognized a slowdown in global warming over the past 15 years in its 2013 report. [29] According to the Heartland Institute's 2013 NIPCC report, the earth "has not warmed significantly for the past 16 years despite an 8% increase in atmospheric CO2." [67] In Aug. 2014 a study in the Open Journal of Statistics analyzed surface temperature records and satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere and confirmed that this slowdown in global warming has occurred. [72] According to Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Richard Lindzen, PhD, the IPCC's "excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean. However, this is simply an admission that the [climate] models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans..." [73]
Predictions of accelerating human-caused climate change are based upon computerized climate models that are inadequate and incorrect. Climate models have been unable to simulate major known features of past climate such as the ice ages or the very warm climates of the Miocene, Eocene, and Cretaceous periods. If models cannot replicate past climate changes they should not be trusted to predict future climate changes. [58] A 2011 Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Science study using observational data rather than computer climate models concluded that "the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity" and overestimate how fast the earth will warm as CO2 levels increase. [75] Two other studies using observational data found that IPCC projections of future global warming are too high. [76] [97] In a 2014 article, climatologist and former NASA scientist Roy Spencer, PhD, concluded that 95% of climate models have "over-forecast the warming trend since 1979." [77] According to Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Winnipeg, Tim Ball, PhD, "IPCC computer climate models are the vehicles of deception… [T]hey create the results they are designed to produce." [78]
Sea levels have been steadily rising for thousands of years, and the increase has nothing to do with humans. A 2014 report by the Global Warming Policy Foundation found that a slow global sea level rise has been ongoing for the last 10,000 years. [79] When the earth began coming out of the Pleistocene Ice Age 18,000 years ago, sea levels were about 400 feet lower than they are today and have been steadily rising ever since. [60] According to Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Judith Curry, PhD "it is clear that natural variability has dominated sea level rise during the 20th century, with changes in ocean heat content and changes in precipitation patterns." [80] Freeman Dyson, Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics and Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, has stated that there is "no evidence" that rising sea levels are due to anthropogenic climate change. [81]
The acidity levels of the oceans are within past natural levels, and the current rise in acidity is a natural fluctuation, not the result of human caused climate change. [120] The pH of average ocean surface water is 8.1 and has only decreased 0.1 since the beginning of the industrial revolution (neutral is pH 7, acid is below pH 7). [121] In 2010 Science published a study of ocean acidity levels over the past 15 million years, finding that the "samples record surface seawater pH values that are within the range observed in the oceans today." [82] Increased atmospheric CO2 absorbed by the oceans results in higher rates of photosynthesis and faster growth of ocean plants and phytoplankton, which increases pH levels keeping the water alkaline, not acidic. [60] According to a 2010 paper by the Science and Public Policy Institute, "our harmless emissions of trifling quantities of carbon dioxide cannot possibly acidify the oceans." [63]
Glaciers have been growing and receding for thousands of years due to natural causes, not human activity. The IPCC predicted that Himalayan glaciers would likely melt away by 2035, a prediction they disavowed in 2010. [83] In 2014 a study of study of 2,181 Himalayan glaciers from 2000-2011 showed that 86.6% of the glaciers were not receding. [84] According to a 2013 study of ice cores published in Nature Geoscience, the current melting of glaciers in Western Antarctica is due to "atmospheric circulation changes" that have "caused rapid warming over the West Antarctic Ice Sheet" and cannot be directly attributed to human caused climate change. [85] According to one of the study authors, "[i]f we could look back at this region of Antarctica in the 1940s and 1830s, we would find that the regional climate would look a lot like it does today, and I think we also would find the glaciers retreating much as they are today." [86] According to Christian Schlüchter, Professor of Geology at the University of Bern, 4,000 year old tree remains have been found beneath retreating glaciers in the Swiss Alps, indicating that they were previously glacier-free. According to Schlüchter, the current retreat of glaciers in the Alps began in the mid-19th century, before large amounts of human caused CO2 had entered the atmosphere. [87]
Deep ocean currents, not human activity, are a primary driver of natural climate warming and cooling cycles. Changes in ocean currents are primarily responsible for the melting Greenland ice sheet, Arctic sea ice, and Arctic permafrost. Over the 20th century there have been two Arctic warming periods with a cooling period (1940-1970) in between. According to a 2009 study in Geophysical Research Letters, natural shifts in the ocean currents are the major cause of these climate changes, not human-generated greenhouse gases. [124] According to William Gray, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, most of the climate changes over the last century are natural and "due to multi-decadal and multi-century changes in deep global ocean currents." [122] Global cooling from 1940 to the 1970s, and warming from the 1970s to 2008, coincided with fluctuations in ocean currents and cloud cover driven by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) - a naturally occurring rearrangement in atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. [123] According to a 2014 article by Don Easterbrook, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University, the "PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977." [88]
Increased hurricane activity and other extreme weather events are a result of natural weather patterns, not human-caused climate change. According to a 2013 report from the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University, the increase in human-produced CO2 over the past century has had "little or no significant effect" on global tropical cyclone activity. The report further states that specific hurricanes, including Sandy, Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, and Ike, were not a direct consequence of human-caused global warming. [89] Between 1995-2015 increased hurricane activity (including Katrina) was recorded, however, according to the NOAA, it was not the result of human-induced climate change; it was the result of cyclical tropical cyclone patterns, driven primarily by natural ocean currents. [125] Many types of recorded extreme weather events over the past half-century have actually become less frequent and less severe. [93] Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Judith Curry, PhD, states that she is "unconvinced by any of the arguments that I have seen that attributes a single extreme weather event, a cluster of extreme weather events, or statistics of extreme weather events" to human-caused climate change. [90] Richard Lindzen, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also states that there is a lack of evidence connecting extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, or floods, to human-caused global warming. [92]
On taking earth's temperature.
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