Interesting interviews with Dr. Barham (both yours and the Youtube one).
I guess my biggest quibble would be that I don't think "non-reductive naturalism" really means anything. If "naturalism" means anything, it seems to me, it means the idea that reality reduces exhaustively to the blind and mechanistic. Once you've acknowledged that teleology and purpose are objectively real features of the world that cannot be reduced to blind mechanism, particularly the teleology and purpose of the rational human intellect, slapping the word "naturalism" on your view doesn't seem to communicate anything.
And using the word "emergence" to account for real irreducible purpose in biology doesn't make things any clearer either. To say that the irreducible purpose we see in biology "emerges" means either that it derives from purpose that exists at a deeper level of reality and ultimately from the deepest level of reality, in which case you have theism rather than naturalism, or it's a violation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and an appeal to real irreducible features of the world coming into existence magically without any sort of cause, basis, or rationale, in which case you have insanity and a total upending of rational thought and inquiry.
However, I think the overall view of biology that Dr. Barham espouses is correct, and the intrinsic Aristotelean purpose he describes is certainly real. The discoveries being made by guys like James Shapiro (who Dr. Barham references), Stuart Kauffman, Mike Levin, Perry Marshall, Richard Sternberg and more are showing to an increasingly undeniable degree that living organisms routinely do things right here and now that are clearly purposeful and non-random, but that transcend the limits of computation and mechanism, and thus could not possibly have *originated* in a blind and mechanistic (ie Darwinian) manner.
It's likely that even many of the changes we typically describe as "microevolution" are actually partly or wholly the result of these purposeful and non-computational abilities than purely Darwinian mechanisms.
Yet it seems highly implausible that even this sort of irreducible intrinsic purposiveness of organisms can possibly account for all evolutionary change, particularly life's culmination in the rational human intellect, which cannot be accounted for in material terms at all. There must also be external agency driving it as well, just as there must have been external agency responsible for the origin of life in the first place, given the existence of irreducible purpose in biological organisms and the impossibility of them causing themselves to exist.
Interesting interviews with Dr. Barham (both yours and the Youtube one).
I guess my biggest quibble would be that I don't think "non-reductive naturalism" really means anything. If "naturalism" means anything, it seems to me, it means the idea that reality reduces exhaustively to the blind and mechanistic. Once you've acknowledged that teleology and purpose are objectively real features of the world that cannot be reduced to blind mechanism, particularly the teleology and purpose of the rational human intellect, slapping the word "naturalism" on your view doesn't seem to communicate anything.
And using the word "emergence" to account for real irreducible purpose in biology doesn't make things any clearer either. To say that the irreducible purpose we see in biology "emerges" means either that it derives from purpose that exists at a deeper level of reality and ultimately from the deepest level of reality, in which case you have theism rather than naturalism, or it's a violation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and an appeal to real irreducible features of the world coming into existence magically without any sort of cause, basis, or rationale, in which case you have insanity and a total upending of rational thought and inquiry.
However, I think the overall view of biology that Dr. Barham espouses is correct, and the intrinsic Aristotelean purpose he describes is certainly real. The discoveries being made by guys like James Shapiro (who Dr. Barham references), Stuart Kauffman, Mike Levin, Perry Marshall, Richard Sternberg and more are showing to an increasingly undeniable degree that living organisms routinely do things right here and now that are clearly purposeful and non-random, but that transcend the limits of computation and mechanism, and thus could not possibly have *originated* in a blind and mechanistic (ie Darwinian) manner.
It's likely that even many of the changes we typically describe as "microevolution" are actually partly or wholly the result of these purposeful and non-computational abilities than purely Darwinian mechanisms.
Yet it seems highly implausible that even this sort of irreducible intrinsic purposiveness of organisms can possibly account for all evolutionary change, particularly life's culmination in the rational human intellect, which cannot be accounted for in material terms at all. There must also be external agency driving it as well, just as there must have been external agency responsible for the origin of life in the first place, given the existence of irreducible purpose in biological organisms and the impossibility of them causing themselves to exist.