I just think a philosopher cannot say a whole lot about the brain. If we mix up subjects and objects, we are entering empirical science (physics). I feel it is important that a philosopher should draw a line between what he does and empirical science. A philosopher should get his source of ideas from his life and fellow philosophers. No matter how you do it a philosopher's authority cames from the "I".
Good stuff. Reality and the experience of it are not two. The brain is a prism allowing a particular experience to occur, but not experience (reality) itself.
The way I see it, reality itself is doing a good enough job of experiencinjg itself, in a way. Reality is self-like, therefore there could be other realities, and we as noobs don't know where one begins and the other ends. More prisms for you. An artistic rendition of our combined visualizations (or realities) of reality.
But reality isn't "self-like", it is self itself, so to speak. Reality isn't "like" anything. That's why science or philosophy or anything else will never be able to say, "Reality is like this:" with complete accuracy. Human evolution will get us closer and closer to the understanding that we already always are 'it'. There may be other universes with different rules, but they are 'it', too. Part of the one that has no other.
All these endless tautologies here on youtube or in universities or anywhere else are ridiculous unless they point out to a person that sooner or later they need to shut up, be silent, and experience what they already are. But the mind has a very hard time with that- it would rather try and work things out. It's the basic delusion of the cerebral cortex- I catagorize, therefore I will find the answer. To all those who believe that logic and reason will answer the ultimate question, I say NO.
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Logic and reason are relative, but reality that has no other, is absolute, right? If yes, then we are in agreement, it just thatI use languagge differently.
My friend Lucile told me that there is nothing INVISIBLE that makes up mental phenomena, and since she is always right, I KNOW that there is nothing invisible about my mind! In other words: you claiming that there is something invisible that makes up, at least in part, what the mind is, seems to be an opinion based on your faith! How do you know that there is something invisible that makes up, at least in part, mental phenomena?
It's very simple, John. If I were standing before you, you would not be able to see my thoughts. You could study and measure my brain as much as you'd like, but there are no thoughts there. The thoughts are within my experience. They are certainly related to what goes on in my brain, but they cannot be reduced to it.
Reductionism could not explain the mind anymore than listing all the parts of a bicycle could explain bike riding. Fair enough!
However, Mary, (a color blind scientist who studies light) cannot see red, not because red is invisible, rather it is that she has some physical (material) brain-state that prevents HER from the experience of seeing red. There is nothing magical or invisible that prevents Mary from seeing red, she merely has a boo-boo in her occipital lobe.
I'd argue for what's called an ecological theory of color. Color isn't simply subjective, produced by our individual brain wiring and eye structure. Nor is it simply objective, caused by the wavelength of light (there is NO causal relationship between wavelength and perception of color). The truth seems to be that color emerges when various sorts of nervous systems interact with various sorts of environments.
Of course the program-functioning (thought, etc.) and the processor-hardware (brain-function, body-function and body-condition) are strongly related, in our case.
The future IS in that skull right now (and nowhere else, unless you shared it.)
Indeed, human brains have a strong ability to imagine: that IS the future.
Outside the JellyNetworks, (including all animals) i see no structure capable of such mental feats as projecting a future, and no need for it.
prhughes, time is not in the skull. Mind is not localizable in space--it is that which allows space and time to exist at all. Your eyes open your being to the world itself, and your experience is always directed toward the world with others. Don't trap yourself in your skull; that's not where we live.
Yes, the mind is the brain, but the brain is not the mind. The mind exceeds the brain, while the brain, being matter in itself, serves to limit the mind. Think in terms of evolution. The brain and it's intricately displayed system is just a manifestation of the mind.
How does the mind exceed the brain; how is the brain a manifestation of the mind? I think the mind IS the brain and that the brain IS the mind. The mind and brain are one and the same! There does not seem to be anything outside of our brain that does any of the mental phenomena we associate with having minds.
You wrote this comment using a counterexample to your comment. If you had said "all" rather than "any of the mental phenomena" then i would have to agree with you temporarily (the "supremacy" of the human mind will not last much longer: already, the world's foremost chessmaster is not human.) TechCiv is a result of networking human brains, as is everything around you (take a look). Even your "self" is largely a product of this network. But , agreed, without brains, NADA.
I was not talking about generally minds, minds that are more or less advance than ours, or any other minds except human minds.
I think you knew that I mean that WE associate with having (human) minds!
For clarity: There does not seem to be anything outside of our brain that does ANY of the mental phenomena WORK that we associate with having OUR HUMAN minds.
I am not saying that minds of other sorts do not or could not exist. I am saying that our minds ARE OUR brains! There does not seem to be something //invisible// about OUR minds: in humans, brains are necessary to have minds. We have minds BECAUSE we have brains that work, in the same way that tables (those with the ability) have minds BECAUSE of what ever it MUST be for tables (if they could) to have any mental phenomena at all (if they do)! And no, tables probably dont think!
The activities we call "mind", like the activities we call "data processing", while utterly dependent upon hardware (jelly or silicon), are not identical with the hardware, any more than swimming is identical with the swimmer.
If i ever really understand what you mean, i might comment it more appropriately.
Even though i won the junior high spelling contest in 8th grade, the automated spell-checker now knows better than i do how to spell.
Before teletype machines, only a human operator could convert text into electrical (telegraph) signals for long distance transmission. Now your computer performs this conversion and its reverse (signals to text). Before computers, only human beings could read (and understand) text. These machines are outside our brain(s), although products thereof.
Just what you really mean is still unclear to me. If you mean the ability to "consciously" experience, i suspect that many animals share that.
Sometimes it's hard to tell what the world is. Science tells us that the brain influences a lot of how we see the world, it makes it hard to be able to tell what is reality because no-one can step outside themselves to actually know.
I think you misunderstood evolution here in your discussion of cells. Cells and DNA dont exist as they do today because they desire to survive or they mutate just enough to maintain existence- its the other way around. Any cells or DNA around now exists because it happened not to be useless- it survived long enough to reproduced itself.
Your analogy was like the design arg for the complexity of the earth. Its not that its perfect because we're here- we're here because it works.
I understand perfectly well how a neo-Darwinist explains evolution, I just find the argument unconvincing. What you say here amounts to nothing more than a tautology: organisms exist today because they have survived. Yes, that much is obvious. But it is no explantion of evolution or living organization. To explain why matter came to life and then continued to complexify, i attribute an underlying Eros, or urge toward greater wholeness, to matter itself.
I'm not exactly sure that life complexifies. Are slugs more complex than organisms that used to exist? Cell structre is incredibly complex admittedly- but as an organism it isnt that important compared to what happens to work. If there was a cataclysmic event perhaps only single celled organisms would survive. To posit an underlying consciousness where in explanitory terms we dont need- i dunno- Okhams razor n'that.
The complexification of living organisms is not a global phenomenon applying to all existing creatures, but to a single stream of evolutionary momentum carrying life from non-nucleated cells, to eukaryotes, to metazoa, to amphibians, to reptiles, to mammals, to primates, to astronauts, etc. If what happened to work was all that mattered for life, we'd still be jellyfish. If an meteor was headed toward earth, only an intelligent life form would be capable of preventing it.
So while it is true that bacteria are the most well-adapted, that's not what defines complexity. I don't think attributing Eros to natural evolution is adding explanatory terms we don't need. There is no explanation for the tendency toward complexity without it.
A world full of bacteria (and whatever they eat) is an open invitation to get bigger and swallow bacteria whole (as well as to get smaller and eat them from inside). Both options have been thoroughly explored. The "smaller" path limit is virus-sized, while gravity and metabolic needs restrict the (bodily) "bigger" way. TechCiv, like social insect colonies, is a way of getting bigger despite gravity and food scarcity, up to a point. "We" are approaching that point now, inviting new forms of life.
0TAT0: Meteors headed toward earth might be diverted by a Technical Civilization a bit more capable than ours. If you see TechCiv as an intelligent life form, i agree.
This "single stream" of yours strikes me as pure anthropocentric narcissism. Crown of Creation-ism.
"We" still ARE jellyfish, as well as bacteria and a vast array of other living systems. Food gets mighty scarce in a world full of jellyfish, until something finds a way to eat jellyfish, and then to eat jellyfish eaters, and so on.
I'm going to vid response P's vid. He totally misunderstood what I said.
I say all phenomena is thought objects, and that thoughts are emptiness. He somehow thinks I mean that there is a physical reality that is more than a dream and that thoughts are separate from that physicality. In this prolonged dream the dream brain does correlate to certain dream content, but energy itself, which forms brain matter and brain chemicals, as well as principles of electro chemical dynamics, are emptiness.
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What I mean is that mechanisms themselves are self-organizing. A group of rat neurons self-organized on a petridish sufficiently to learn to fly an F-22 flight simulator.
There is no such thing as "self-organization". Any perceived "self" in the system of the universe is just another arbitrary set of atoms reacting mechanistically according to physical law.
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There are no laws established that shed light on why neurons on a petri dish self-organize into a system. I'm NOT saying a separate self or soul entitty occurs. I'm saying what can be called self systems continually occur in the universe. The more complex the organization, the deeper the subjective experience possbile.
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To specify, there are no mechanistic or newtonian laws that alon can explain why neurons self-organize into coherent system, while supernatural or quantum mechanical factors are not a given.
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Wikipedia: Self-organization is a process of attraction and repulsion in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (but not always) display emergent properties.
adjohnson, the "self" in self-organization is an appropriate term, because an organism continually constructs its own boundary that distinguishes it from its environment. "self" refers to this bootstrapping of the molecules that make up the organism such that they begin to constitute an autonomous system no longer at the whim of mere chemistry and physics. No physical laws are broken in this process, but mechanical physical laws alone cannot account for such emergence.
@0ThouArtThat0: What other forces do you propose are directing these molecules to "organize", and where is any scientific study that measures and demonstrates these alleged forces to exist anywhere but inside your own mind (which obviously has the motive to invent such things since you constantly seem to be grasping for something "more" out of the cold, sterile, mechanistic universe)?
I think all this mumbo-jumbo is just the new age equivalent of the tired religious claims of the supernatural acting on the physical world. And I think either you have innocently inherited that mindset outside of your control, or you subconsciously deceive yourself into believing such things must exist in an act of psychological self-comfort.
adjohnosn, I'm not sure if you attend a university and have access to scientific journals, but if you do, search the appropriate journals (Journal of the American Chemical Society, Biology and Philosophy, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, etc.) for "autopoiesis." The concept of self-organization has been well established in scientific academia since the 70s, so unless the new age has infiltrated, I don't know what you're talking about.
A wonderful paper, if you can find it, is called "Life After Kant: Natural Purposes and the Autopoietic Foundations of Biological Individuality" by Andreas Weber and Francisco Varela (published in Phen. and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 1, num. 2, June 2002).
Thanks for the *philosophical* references, but I seriously doubt that any legitimate, generally-accepted *scientific* paper has proposed that the strictly nucleus/DNA directed organization of cells "no longer" operates within the confines of basic "chemistry and physics", as you claim above. That's what I was countering. There's just no way general science has accepted a special-pleading breach of chemical & physical law. I'm sorry, there are just no grounds for that, scientifically speaking.
In other words, yes "autopoiesis" exists, it's the strictly physical phenomenon of matter having become arranged over vast spans of time through a ongoing series of complex & compounding chemical reactions such that it is capable of "self"-maintenance and "self"-reproduction. Our language lacks the proper term to describe this reflexive chemical behavior. The cell is no "self". It's all chemistry. You have yet to propose anything outside of chem and physics that would govern this "autopoiesis".
Mechanical causality is necessary, but not sufficient to account for the self-organization going on within living systems. DNA cannot direct anything without the proteins it produces already existing to aid the process of transcription and translation. This is a circular process, and it requires attributing formal and final causality to living organization. There is no breach of chem. and phys. law, only an emergence beyond what can be strictly account for in those reductive terms.
What governs autopoiesis? I'd steal a word from Spinoza and say it is the conatus of matter that makes self-organization possible. There is no other way to account for the tendency toward complexity evident in cosmic and biological evolution of matter.
I don't mean this as an insult, but you really are showing your true colors here. I guess you're practically a closet creationist, or at least agree with their fundamental premise that biological systems could not have emerged naturally without a "living" source.
This quote of your proves it:
"DNA cannot direct anything without the proteins it produces already existing...This is a circular process, and it requires attributing formal and final causality to living organization."
Living systems certainly emerged naturally. But in order to account for what Kant called the "natural purposes" of such systems, I don't think it is sufficient to conceive of nature mechanistically. I come to this conclusion by way of reason, not faith. Reason demands an explanation for life that any thorough philosopher would recognize is not offered by a Newtonian conception of the physical world. My position is only similar to Creationism if you lump all who disagree with you together.
Adjohnson; The same thing could be said about your purely mechanistic view. I think ppl want to be living in a world that doesn't have a purpose (cuz then there's nothing they SHOULD be doing). They could do whatever! it's pretty liberating...
You could be subconsciously deceiving yourself about the truths of the complexities of life so that you can remain in a world complelety governed by chemistry, a world where there's no meaning or purpose. That world is a crutch...
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@hofisito: No, I wish there were actually some purpose to this thing because my life is pretty depressing as it stands and knowing the universe has nothing to offer me doesn't help. I don't want to be liberated from meaning, I strive for meaning everyday. I'm not a nihilist....maybe I'm an existentialist?
But something matt has eluded to many times is that in a purely epistemological sense, our "internal" observations should be valid JUST like our "sensory" observations.
I think we all internally sense that the world has both free will and purpose (that's why morality has permeated our cultures for years).
I would encourage you not to deny your internal observations of the world, and maybe keep your mind open to a world with purpose.
Hey, OThou.. - you pretty smart kid. You gotta maybe PhD or gonna get one?
DrDeist 1 year ago
I just think a philosopher cannot say a whole lot about the brain. If we mix up subjects and objects, we are entering empirical science (physics). I feel it is important that a philosopher should draw a line between what he does and empirical science. A philosopher should get his source of ideas from his life and fellow philosophers. No matter how you do it a philosopher's authority cames from the "I".
Israe5l 2 years ago
Maybe it might turn out that, there are objective aspects to the "I" apart from the obvious subjective aspects.
Israe5l 2 years ago
Good stuff. Reality and the experience of it are not two. The brain is a prism allowing a particular experience to occur, but not experience (reality) itself.
zencat 2 years ago
The way I see it, reality itself is doing a good enough job of experiencinjg itself, in a way. Reality is self-like, therefore there could be other realities, and we as noobs don't know where one begins and the other ends. More prisms for you. An artistic rendition of our combined visualizations (or realities) of reality.
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
But reality isn't "self-like", it is self itself, so to speak. Reality isn't "like" anything. That's why science or philosophy or anything else will never be able to say, "Reality is like this:" with complete accuracy. Human evolution will get us closer and closer to the understanding that we already always are 'it'. There may be other universes with different rules, but they are 'it', too. Part of the one that has no other.
zencat 2 years ago
All these endless tautologies here on youtube or in universities or anywhere else are ridiculous unless they point out to a person that sooner or later they need to shut up, be silent, and experience what they already are. But the mind has a very hard time with that- it would rather try and work things out. It's the basic delusion of the cerebral cortex- I catagorize, therefore I will find the answer. To all those who believe that logic and reason will answer the ultimate question, I say NO.
zencat 2 years ago
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Logic and reason are relative, but reality that has no other, is absolute, right? If yes, then we are in agreement, it just thatI use languagge differently.
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
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Some angry and depressed soul is putting minuses again to me.
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
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Comprendo, signor zencat. :)
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
I know you do, PostMo. I was just using you as a spring-board. Muchas Gracias, colaborador!
zencat 2 years ago
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Lucky Italian and Spanish are mutually comprehensible languages. ):
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
LOL, sorry- just guessing. I'm a dumbass, mono-lingual American trying to make Tagalog my 2nd language.
zencat 2 years ago
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Don't be so unkind to yourself. I think you'll do fine. You're a really smart and down to earth dude.
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
My friend Lucile told me that there is nothing INVISIBLE that makes up mental phenomena, and since she is always right, I KNOW that there is nothing invisible about my mind! In other words: you claiming that there is something invisible that makes up, at least in part, what the mind is, seems to be an opinion based on your faith! How do you know that there is something invisible that makes up, at least in part, mental phenomena?
The mind IS the brain!
If not, then what is it !?
JohnHasSeriousQ 2 years ago
It's very simple, John. If I were standing before you, you would not be able to see my thoughts. You could study and measure my brain as much as you'd like, but there are no thoughts there. The thoughts are within my experience. They are certainly related to what goes on in my brain, but they cannot be reduced to it.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
True; sort of!
Reductionism could not explain the mind anymore than listing all the parts of a bicycle could explain bike riding. Fair enough!
However, Mary, (a color blind scientist who studies light) cannot see red, not because red is invisible, rather it is that she has some physical (material) brain-state that prevents HER from the experience of seeing red. There is nothing magical or invisible that prevents Mary from seeing red, she merely has a boo-boo in her occipital lobe.
JohnHasSeriousQ 2 years ago
I'd argue for what's called an ecological theory of color. Color isn't simply subjective, produced by our individual brain wiring and eye structure. Nor is it simply objective, caused by the wavelength of light (there is NO causal relationship between wavelength and perception of color). The truth seems to be that color emerges when various sorts of nervous systems interact with various sorts of environments.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
Why not, for g-d's sake?
Of course the program-functioning (thought, etc.) and the processor-hardware (brain-function, body-function and body-condition) are strongly related, in our case.
The future IS in that skull right now (and nowhere else, unless you shared it.)
Indeed, human brains have a strong ability to imagine: that IS the future.
Outside the JellyNetworks, (including all animals) i see no structure capable of such mental feats as projecting a future, and no need for it.
Do you?
prhughes0 2 years ago
prhughes, time is not in the skull. Mind is not localizable in space--it is that which allows space and time to exist at all. Your eyes open your being to the world itself, and your experience is always directed toward the world with others. Don't trap yourself in your skull; that's not where we live.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
"Why not?" refers to the last phrase of this comment.
p
prhughes0 2 years ago
Yes, the mind is the brain, but the brain is not the mind. The mind exceeds the brain, while the brain, being matter in itself, serves to limit the mind. Think in terms of evolution. The brain and it's intricately displayed system is just a manifestation of the mind.
robokou 2 years ago
How does the mind exceed the brain; how is the brain a manifestation of the mind? I think the mind IS the brain and that the brain IS the mind. The mind and brain are one and the same! There does not seem to be anything outside of our brain that does any of the mental phenomena we associate with having minds.
JohnHasSeriousQ 2 years ago
JHSQ:
You wrote this comment using a counterexample to your comment. If you had said "all" rather than "any of the mental phenomena" then i would have to agree with you temporarily (the "supremacy" of the human mind will not last much longer: already, the world's foremost chessmaster is not human.) TechCiv is a result of networking human brains, as is everything around you (take a look). Even your "self" is largely a product of this network. But , agreed, without brains, NADA.
prhughes0 2 years ago
I was not talking about generally minds, minds that are more or less advance than ours, or any other minds except human minds.
I think you knew that I mean that WE associate with having (human) minds!
For clarity: There does not seem to be anything outside of our brain that does ANY of the mental phenomena WORK that we associate with having OUR HUMAN minds.
JohnHasSeriousQ 2 years ago
I am not saying that minds of other sorts do not or could not exist. I am saying that our minds ARE OUR brains! There does not seem to be something //invisible// about OUR minds: in humans, brains are necessary to have minds. We have minds BECAUSE we have brains that work, in the same way that tables (those with the ability) have minds BECAUSE of what ever it MUST be for tables (if they could) to have any mental phenomena at all (if they do)! And no, tables probably dont think!
JohnHasSeriousQ 2 years ago
Clearly, without human brains, no human minds.
The activities we call "mind", like the activities we call "data processing", while utterly dependent upon hardware (jelly or silicon), are not identical with the hardware, any more than swimming is identical with the swimmer.
If i ever really understand what you mean, i might comment it more appropriately.
Even though i won the junior high spelling contest in 8th grade, the automated spell-checker now knows better than i do how to spell.
Regards
p
prhughes0 2 years ago
Before teletype machines, only a human operator could convert text into electrical (telegraph) signals for long distance transmission. Now your computer performs this conversion and its reverse (signals to text). Before computers, only human beings could read (and understand) text. These machines are outside our brain(s), although products thereof.
Just what you really mean is still unclear to me. If you mean the ability to "consciously" experience, i suspect that many animals share that.
Ciao
p
prhughes0 2 years ago
Take a look at Peter's latest post on:
consciousentities
He's so interesting on all this...
2bsirius 2 years ago
This is the meaning of the movement.
I know our world is not complete.
To be called human evolution is like unfinished.
Therefore, only wihal standards, we know
The ability of the human potential is not infinite because
Be. I remember it clearly has suffered.
This is truly terrible.
kwakzzang 2 years ago
Sometimes it's hard to tell what the world is. Science tells us that the brain influences a lot of how we see the world, it makes it hard to be able to tell what is reality because no-one can step outside themselves to actually know.
HaleyMary 2 years ago
I think you misunderstood evolution here in your discussion of cells. Cells and DNA dont exist as they do today because they desire to survive or they mutate just enough to maintain existence- its the other way around. Any cells or DNA around now exists because it happened not to be useless- it survived long enough to reproduced itself.
Your analogy was like the design arg for the complexity of the earth. Its not that its perfect because we're here- we're here because it works.
leiwy 2 years ago
I understand perfectly well how a neo-Darwinist explains evolution, I just find the argument unconvincing. What you say here amounts to nothing more than a tautology: organisms exist today because they have survived. Yes, that much is obvious. But it is no explantion of evolution or living organization. To explain why matter came to life and then continued to complexify, i attribute an underlying Eros, or urge toward greater wholeness, to matter itself.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
I'm not exactly sure that life complexifies. Are slugs more complex than organisms that used to exist? Cell structre is incredibly complex admittedly- but as an organism it isnt that important compared to what happens to work. If there was a cataclysmic event perhaps only single celled organisms would survive. To posit an underlying consciousness where in explanitory terms we dont need- i dunno- Okhams razor n'that.
like the videos
cheers
leiwy 2 years ago
The complexification of living organisms is not a global phenomenon applying to all existing creatures, but to a single stream of evolutionary momentum carrying life from non-nucleated cells, to eukaryotes, to metazoa, to amphibians, to reptiles, to mammals, to primates, to astronauts, etc. If what happened to work was all that mattered for life, we'd still be jellyfish. If an meteor was headed toward earth, only an intelligent life form would be capable of preventing it.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
So while it is true that bacteria are the most well-adapted, that's not what defines complexity. I don't think attributing Eros to natural evolution is adding explanatory terms we don't need. There is no explanation for the tendency toward complexity without it.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
A world full of bacteria (and whatever they eat) is an open invitation to get bigger and swallow bacteria whole (as well as to get smaller and eat them from inside). Both options have been thoroughly explored. The "smaller" path limit is virus-sized, while gravity and metabolic needs restrict the (bodily) "bigger" way. TechCiv, like social insect colonies, is a way of getting bigger despite gravity and food scarcity, up to a point. "We" are approaching that point now, inviting new forms of life.
prhughes0 2 years ago
0TAT0: Meteors headed toward earth might be diverted by a Technical Civilization a bit more capable than ours. If you see TechCiv as an intelligent life form, i agree.
This "single stream" of yours strikes me as pure anthropocentric narcissism. Crown of Creation-ism.
"We" still ARE jellyfish, as well as bacteria and a vast array of other living systems. Food gets mighty scarce in a world full of jellyfish, until something finds a way to eat jellyfish, and then to eat jellyfish eaters, and so on.
prhughes0 2 years ago
Haha, great. I've been hunting down that tautology also! The fittests surivive, who are the fittest? those who survive. xD
Also found that type of thinking in discussions about morality; happiness is what people want, what do people want? happiness.
They went too far with being clear; hence i (too?) war on all "obviousness"/"transparancy" these days x)
Great to see you're still holding up! keep on thinking :) Btw: would be interesting with a list of books you've read! (aside from favs)
CPLains 2 years ago
I'm going to vid response P's vid. He totally misunderstood what I said.
I say all phenomena is thought objects, and that thoughts are emptiness. He somehow thinks I mean that there is a physical reality that is more than a dream and that thoughts are separate from that physicality. In this prolonged dream the dream brain does correlate to certain dream content, but energy itself, which forms brain matter and brain chemicals, as well as principles of electro chemical dynamics, are emptiness.
Cashify 2 years ago
I'm sick of people adopting an apologetic tone for a magical worldview.
Barklord 2 years ago 4
The universe is mechanical. You're too smart for this shit. Get over it.
adjohnson916 2 years ago 2
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The universe is explainable as méchanical .This is not a whole view.
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
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What I mean is that mechanisms themselves are self-organizing. A group of rat neurons self-organized on a petridish sufficiently to learn to fly an F-22 flight simulator.
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
There is no such thing as "self-organization". Any perceived "self" in the system of the universe is just another arbitrary set of atoms reacting mechanistically according to physical law.
adjohnson916 2 years ago 3
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There are no laws established that shed light on why neurons on a petri dish self-organize into a system. I'm NOT saying a separate self or soul entitty occurs. I'm saying what can be called self systems continually occur in the universe. The more complex the organization, the deeper the subjective experience possbile.
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
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To specify, there are no mechanistic or newtonian laws that alon can explain why neurons self-organize into coherent system, while supernatural or quantum mechanical factors are not a given.
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
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Wikipedia: Self-organization is a process of attraction and repulsion in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (but not always) display emergent properties.
More on this at /wiki/Self-organization
1PostPoMoMaN1 2 years ago
adjohnson, the "self" in self-organization is an appropriate term, because an organism continually constructs its own boundary that distinguishes it from its environment. "self" refers to this bootstrapping of the molecules that make up the organism such that they begin to constitute an autonomous system no longer at the whim of mere chemistry and physics. No physical laws are broken in this process, but mechanical physical laws alone cannot account for such emergence.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
@0ThouArtThat0: What other forces do you propose are directing these molecules to "organize", and where is any scientific study that measures and demonstrates these alleged forces to exist anywhere but inside your own mind (which obviously has the motive to invent such things since you constantly seem to be grasping for something "more" out of the cold, sterile, mechanistic universe)?
adjohnson916 2 years ago 3
I think all this mumbo-jumbo is just the new age equivalent of the tired religious claims of the supernatural acting on the physical world. And I think either you have innocently inherited that mindset outside of your control, or you subconsciously deceive yourself into believing such things must exist in an act of psychological self-comfort.
adjohnson916 2 years ago 3
adjohnosn, I'm not sure if you attend a university and have access to scientific journals, but if you do, search the appropriate journals (Journal of the American Chemical Society, Biology and Philosophy, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, etc.) for "autopoiesis." The concept of self-organization has been well established in scientific academia since the 70s, so unless the new age has infiltrated, I don't know what you're talking about.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
A wonderful paper, if you can find it, is called "Life After Kant: Natural Purposes and the Autopoietic Foundations of Biological Individuality" by Andreas Weber and Francisco Varela (published in Phen. and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 1, num. 2, June 2002).
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
Thanks for the *philosophical* references, but I seriously doubt that any legitimate, generally-accepted *scientific* paper has proposed that the strictly nucleus/DNA directed organization of cells "no longer" operates within the confines of basic "chemistry and physics", as you claim above. That's what I was countering. There's just no way general science has accepted a special-pleading breach of chemical & physical law. I'm sorry, there are just no grounds for that, scientifically speaking.
adjohnson916 2 years ago 2
In other words, yes "autopoiesis" exists, it's the strictly physical phenomenon of matter having become arranged over vast spans of time through a ongoing series of complex & compounding chemical reactions such that it is capable of "self"-maintenance and "self"-reproduction. Our language lacks the proper term to describe this reflexive chemical behavior. The cell is no "self". It's all chemistry. You have yet to propose anything outside of chem and physics that would govern this "autopoiesis".
adjohnson916 2 years ago 2
Mechanical causality is necessary, but not sufficient to account for the self-organization going on within living systems. DNA cannot direct anything without the proteins it produces already existing to aid the process of transcription and translation. This is a circular process, and it requires attributing formal and final causality to living organization. There is no breach of chem. and phys. law, only an emergence beyond what can be strictly account for in those reductive terms.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
What governs autopoiesis? I'd steal a word from Spinoza and say it is the conatus of matter that makes self-organization possible. There is no other way to account for the tendency toward complexity evident in cosmic and biological evolution of matter.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
@0ThouArtThat0:
I don't mean this as an insult, but you really are showing your true colors here. I guess you're practically a closet creationist, or at least agree with their fundamental premise that biological systems could not have emerged naturally without a "living" source.
This quote of your proves it:
"DNA cannot direct anything without the proteins it produces already existing...This is a circular process, and it requires attributing formal and final causality to living organization."
adjohnson916 2 years ago
Living systems certainly emerged naturally. But in order to account for what Kant called the "natural purposes" of such systems, I don't think it is sufficient to conceive of nature mechanistically. I come to this conclusion by way of reason, not faith. Reason demands an explanation for life that any thorough philosopher would recognize is not offered by a Newtonian conception of the physical world. My position is only similar to Creationism if you lump all who disagree with you together.
0ThouArtThat0 2 years ago
Adjohnson; The same thing could be said about your purely mechanistic view. I think ppl want to be living in a world that doesn't have a purpose (cuz then there's nothing they SHOULD be doing). They could do whatever! it's pretty liberating...
You could be subconsciously deceiving yourself about the truths of the complexities of life so that you can remain in a world complelety governed by chemistry, a world where there's no meaning or purpose. That world is a crutch...
hofisito 2 years ago
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@hofisito: No, I wish there were actually some purpose to this thing because my life is pretty depressing as it stands and knowing the universe has nothing to offer me doesn't help. I don't want to be liberated from meaning, I strive for meaning everyday. I'm not a nihilist....maybe I'm an existentialist?
adjohnson916 2 years ago
Well I'm glad to hear that's not how you think :)
But something matt has eluded to many times is that in a purely epistemological sense, our "internal" observations should be valid JUST like our "sensory" observations.
I think we all internally sense that the world has both free will and purpose (that's why morality has permeated our cultures for years).
I would encourage you not to deny your internal observations of the world, and maybe keep your mind open to a world with purpose.
hofisito 2 years ago
I'm also sorry to hear your life is pretty depressing right now... I hope life gets better for you soon!
hofisito 2 years ago