I would say "YES." Because an algorithm is a mathematical entity. And mathematics is a universal language. Universals are never the products of mechanistic behavior — mechanics is a result of, not the cause of, universals.
Universals include not only mathematics and by extension logic; but also the natural (e.g., physico/chemical) laws, and I daresay the moral law as well. All mechanics pertains to finite, physical entities. It has no operational scope beyond them.
The beauty here is that the mind of man has the capacity to engage universal ideas. Which tells me right there that man is not a machine.
Actually getting to Mars, however, did require man to conceive of algorithms that would operate towards the achievement of that purpose. If the algorithms achieved their purpose, it must be because the mathematical "truth" they purport to represent actually corresponds with the way the world really is, independent of human wishes and desires.
Which is NOT to denigrate that human beings wished and desired to get to Mars. If they didn't, "we" wouldn't have gone there. This is only to say that human wishes and desires were not the principal or sufficient cause of their success in so doing.
In sum, the algorithmic specification of the world at large is not a human design. Rather, the truth of Reality as discernible by humans depends on the correspondence of natural phenomena to universal specifications which pre-exist and post-exist the human mind. The truth of the world is not a human design — but the truthfulness of human investigations of Reality absolutely depends on recognition by humans of what David Bohm called the "implicate order" of all that exists — which is not a human creation.
I just think the term "mechanism" as a description of a universe that gives all indication of somehow being "alive" in toto is unfortunate and grossly misleading. I would rate it as a prime example of Whitehead's famous Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.
IOW, just because something "looks like" a machine doesn't actually make it one.
You wrote: "... if you're okay with evolution but think there must be something more than purely mechanistic, materialist evolution, I'm not sure we have much of a disagreement."
Oh my, I'm very, very glad for that!
You also wrote: "...if we give people a mild dose of smallpox (or cow pox), they don't get sick when exposed to a larger dose later. No understanding required."
Aristotle's famous claim is that "all men desire to know." Lately I've begun to suspect that this maxim is not universally true. But for those men who do want to know the "why" of things, understanding is required. And that's how we learned about viruses.
Science's role in such matters is indispensable — but not completely sufficient. There is more to the world than what can be directly observed, weighed, and measured. Certainly, no universal falls into the category of things that are amenable to such methods of investigation.
Thank you truly, dear HHTVL, for your outstandingly thought-provocative essay/post!
This is actually a pretty good conversation... on several issues..
A) Is man a mechanism in carnal form?.. to function in the 3rd dimension..
-OR-
B) Is man a spirit in a carnal space suit.?. to function in a 3D reality..
It seems you can buy Tale(A) or Tale(B) or even some sort of mix of them both.. This is the disconnect between the two forces.. with stragglers in between.. Somebody is a dreamer..
The dreamer could believe man is basically flesh and thats all he is..
Or the dreamer could believe man is basically spirit and thats all he is..
That man is both flesh and spirit conflates both.. but ignores man does not know what “life(death) really is” OR spirit either.. Good convo I would say.. There is room to speculate on both.. because it is all speculation..
The spectre of physical or spiritual “dimensions” on this subject takes the convo to another level.. Not that any resolution is due or even possible..
If man is a mechanical life-form then we are “drones”.. or “breeders”..
If man is a spiritual life-form then we are “entity’s”.. or “forces”..
or a conflated confused mix... Damned good entertainment I would say..
I guess I would agree that evolution required a designer every bit as much as the orbit of Mars did. But to me, that means "not much."
I just think the term "mechanism" as a description of a universe that gives all indication of somehow being "alive" in toto is unfortunate and grossly misleading.
Well, I only used the term to refer to one manifestation of the universe. We've somehow found ourselves talking about whether it's applicable to the whole thing. I meant it the same way one might say the heart and circulatory system is a mechanism: it's observable and studiable pretty much on its own, regardless of whether the larger system of which it's a part can properly be called a mechanism or not.
There is more to the world than what can be directly observed, weighed, and measured.
It occurred to me earlier that for you, evolution is an insufficient explanation, so you think there must be something more. While for me, evolution is a sufficient explanation (for what it tries to explain), but there might be something more. I suppose you've run into some who say evolution is a sufficient explanation, so there must not be anything more, but that kind of hubris doesn't appeal to me.