What if the Theory of Evolution is Right? (Part I)

(#3314) This week, my oldest daughter turned 47. My wife and I took her out to lunch. It was a very pleasant occasion. Though, at one point, she said: "Dad, I should have listened to you."

Well PW ?....since you're there by the water ?....here's one I put together....

****

There is a Dad

there by the sea

who made a girl

'twas meant to be

As tick tock does

up did they grow

so'e took her hand

down spoken roads

Words for tomorrow

those of what was

words for today

and those just because

With these words ?....how far they've come....

From the hopeful skies on an April day

to the happy smiles 'neath a summer sun

thru the autumn winds that guide their way

to the warmth of peace when snowfalls come

There is a Dad

there by the sea

who loves a girl

and that girl ?.....is me.

Making full use of the self-reporting method, on a scale of 1-10, I like.

I wonder when Aristotle failed in his prediction of the free falling object.He predict that the heavier object will come on the ground first rather than the lighter.The weight actually deceiving in this case.I am interesting to know the mental and method factors that deceived him,if this puzzle should be solved philosophically.Can this puzzle be solved philosophically ?.There are lesson from this case.

Fascinating article on new discoveries hinting at the very earliest stages of the evolution of life.

Could Giant Viruses Be the Origin of Life on Earth?

The 2.8 million-year-old specimen is 400,000 years older than researchers thought that our kind first emerged.

If my 'Science' is any good, I would think that maybe older fossils exist. Why not human fossils before the Neanderthals?  Of course, that would prove nothing....

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/05/20/an-alien-origin-for-life-on-earth/

You have to be careful what you mean by "human". Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (or what used to be called Cro-Magnons, our main ancestral line) are very recent (a few hundred thousand years) compared to this precursor, which is at a similar time to the "Lucy" fossil a few million years ago. There are other older fossils than that, even closer to a common primate ancestor.

too hard for my brain 

Can you elaborate. Sounds similar to what I've been reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Hypotheses

   Musing to myself (for I am a philosopher at heart)...

   MW demands to know how something dead would not also be worthless...

   fur coats

   Egyptian mummies

   fireplace logs, shake-shingle roofs and grass or bamboo hutches

   sea shells

   leather shoes, belts and clothing

   trophy heads and antlers

   dinosaur bones

   taxidermy

   cooked meat and vegetables

   fruit

   transplanted organs

   hair wigs

   Did I mention oil?

   When I want to learn about our origins, how the world functions, the composition of the universe and so on and so forth, then I pick up a book of science.

   If I am in an artsy mood, I will go to a movie and eat popcorn, attend a church and pray, read a book of fiction, find some other means of titillation...or pick up a book of philosophy.

   So, philosophy is not worthless...but it is dead.

   Duh.

Homo Sapiens didn't come from Neanderthal, Homo Erectus, Supposed Heidelberg man, or Lucy. There is not one shread of evidence that we did. 😕

Retroviruses within human DNA didn't come from viruses according to the latest science.

The phrase "there is no such thing as data free from interpretation" troubles me. It seems to me that there are facts about the world, and that there is what we know about the world, and that only the latter, not the former, could be said to be dependent upon interpretation. And I do not know how interpretation is supposed to infect our ordinary knowledge claims. It may be that my mental image of a tiger differs from yours even when we are looking at the same tiger; but we both can see that it is striped. Yes, we have to understand the word "striped"--but we both *do* understand the word "striped." How is "That tiger is striped" a matter of interpretation, then? But I don't know whether the Wikipedia article is misleading on this point or not.

I do agree that there is no such thing as "the sense-data," rather than "person X's sense-data" and "person Y's sense-data" and so on. But there is no reason to think that we aren't generally able to learn many of the same facts about the world from our own, individual sense-data.

Actually, the contrary is true. Our DNA shows that Europeans have a few percent of Neanderthal ancestry, Asians have a few percent of Denisovan ancestry, that Denisovans and Neanderthals are themselves branches of a a single offshoot of the human family tree, and many other relationships between the hominid family tree to which we belong.

The statistics always mean that there are more side branches than direct ancestors represented in the fossil record. If you take a snapshot of life at any specific time (even just a snapshot of a single species, say humans 100,000 years ago), only a very small fraction of the organisms have any direct descendants. A number just shy of 1 raised to a very high power is very close to zero, and a number just over 1 raised to the same power is very large: this is the source of the highly skewed contributions.

What paleontologists seek is close side branches: these are entirely adequate, since they provide almost identical information to the much rarer direct ancestors (to the degree that it is very often impossible to distinguish the two).

That is completely unhelpful. Philosophy is not a living thing that could possibly die, the way an animal or plant can. It's clear that when you say that philosophy is dead, you are using the term metaphorically. But I want to know your literal meaning. What does your metaphor mean? It *seems* as though it means that philosophy is worthless.

Now, you *might* mean that philosophy isn't "growing" anymore. You might mean that no one is making any contributions to philosophy anymore. Of course, that would be false. But what do you mean?

That's true Elroch. There were a few promiscuous humans in Europe, but that's all. Even that amount is controversial though.

As far as Neanderthals coming from humans that would be speculation.

Very true. Questioning can never die, and Philosophy is, in essence, questioning:)

It occurs to me that ProfessorProfesesen wanted me to elaborate on fundamental epistemic and metaphysical assumptions (FEMA). Having done so several times elsewhere, I'm tired of typing it, but I'll try to give a short version.

There are certain presuppositions we implicitly make when making ordinary, everyday knowledge claims. I assume my basic thought processes are at least reasonably reliable--otherwise, I could not trust my conclusions about anything to be anything more than wild guesses. I assume my memories really are memories and not false memories (there are two ways in which this is true, but we needn't go into that). When making statements about empirical reality--about apples and oranges, for example--I assume that there is an objectively existing reality and that I gain reasonably reliable information about that objectively existing reality via my senses.

I cannot know that my basic thought processes really are reasonably reliable. Perhaps, like a woman I once saw hypnotized to forget the number seven, I have a fundamental flaw in my basic thought processes that I am simply unaware of. I cannot know that there is an objectively existing reality or that I am gaining reasonably reliable information about it. Perhaps, like Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in Total Recall once he is fitted with a virtual reality helmet, I am experiencing what seem to be real sensations of a real world but am actually only experiencing a virtual reality--sensations in my brain that do not correspond to actual events. Perhaps I am even a disembodied mind experiencing sensations that cause me to build a mental real-world world-model and to project outward and think that there is a real world "out there" when there isn't. These are things I cannot know. But my ordinary, everyday knowledge claims depend on my presupposing that they are true. (I assume that you make parallel presuppositions.)

I call these presuppositions collectively "FEMA" ("Fundamental Epistemic and Metaphysical Assumptions"). Then when I say, "Tigers are striped," I really mean, "Tigers are striped, given my FEMA." But I don't append "given my FEMA" to my ordinary, everyday knowledge claims. We simply have to understand that it's there--that our knowledge claims are really conditional upon our fundamental epistemic and metaphysical assumptions.