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Blogger William Orem wrote on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 02:30 GMT
Diving into Thomas Nagel's
"Mind and Cosmos" (subtitle: "Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False"), I experienced a vague but mounting sense of apprehension--the type one gets during the wine and cheese at a scientific conference when the person you’re speaking to puts finger quotes around the word "evolution." To be perfectly blunt, I thought I had accidentally bought an anti-science polemic by a creationist.
"I would like to defend the untutored reaction of incredulity to the reductionist Neo-Darwinian account of the origin and evolution of life," Nagel tells us near the outset. "It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection."
Is it? An evolutionary biologist, at this moment, would interject a salient distinction between terms like "physical accident," as they are commonly misapplied when critiquing natural selection, and the ability of imperfect replicators to conserve those random variations across time that yield selective advantage. I don't share Nagel's view that the latter state of affairs is highly implausible; I find it both illuminating and rather wonderful. But so what? Of what concern are our respective personal intuitions about nature? It is highly implausible that the same yardstick becomes shorter when I throw it than when I hold it in my hand: but there it is.
Aware of the raised eyebrows among his target audience, Nagel adds some caveats. His is just "the opinion of a layman"--here he is too modest: he is an accomplished professor of philosophy at New York University--and his "skepticism is not based on religious belief, or belief in any definite alternative."
Well and good. Those cards played, though, he makes a full frontal assault on "psychophysical reductionism," and the reductionist-materialist worldview in general, which he sees as having become a shibboleth among the sciences; one that clearly is going fail. His critique is nothing if not sweeping: "The aim of this book is to argue that the mind-body problem is not just a local problem, having to do with the relation between mind, brain, and behavior in living animal organisms, but that it invades our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history."
I myself see nothing of value in the
“intelligent design” crowd, and a
good deal at which to be
alarmed (to say nothing of what branch of science may be
targeted next). Nagel is more tempered: while not buying I.D., he gives the movement credit for opening the way to a large-scale critique of natural selection, and from there to our current schema for understanding nature as a whole. Consciousness, cognition, value are simply not explicable--I am speaking now from Nagel's perspective--by psychophysical reductionism, and likely never will be; therefore even physical phenomena cannot ultimately be explained so long as such explanations are based on materialist, reductionist principles. No, the Cosmos as a whole shows far more evidence of something else going on . . . Tielhard De Chardin seems to be in the offing here . . . something as yet unknown . . . but something that is headed *somewhere*, as "principles of the growth of order" in nature are, "in [their] logical form, teleological rather than mechanistic."
You heard right: Biology is teleological, indeed nature is teleological, clearly assembling itself toward some grand purpose (setting aside that whole "second law of thermodynamics" thing). This is probably the moment that earned Steven Pinker's description of "Mind and Cosmos" as "the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker."
Religious folks of a certain
bent, by contrast, may cheer--but prematurely. Nagel, an atheist, is adamant that a God-style answer won’t fit the bill either: "So my speculations about an alternative to physics as a theory of everything do not invoke a transcendent being but tend toward complications to the immanent character of the natural order." (In any event, such a God would be quite unlike the Judeo-Christian version. If anything, Nagel's intuition sounds more like what Gene Rodenberry suspected: that the universe as a whole is gradually growing into a self-consciousness that will, in time, bring itself retroactively into existence.) Rather, Nagel is only intending to lay the groundwork for how a non-materialist future science might be called for in order fully to explain the presence of mind in the order of nature.
Or, if you like, the presence of nature in the order of mind.
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John Merryman wrote on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 03:45 GMT
I think, that even in terms of physics, he is trying to say something. Consider George Ellis' last contest entry on top down causality and how any form of bottom up process will create an equal top down (re)action.
I guess I'm responding to this after searching for a useful term for the dual hemispheres of the brain and considered Julian Jaynes' concept of the bicameral mind, so I googled...
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I think, that even in terms of physics, he is trying to say something. Consider George Ellis' last contest entry on top down causality and how any form of bottom up process will create an equal top down (re)action.
I guess I'm responding to this after searching for a useful term for the dual hemispheres of the brain and considered Julian Jaynes' concept of the bicameral mind, so I googled and reread about it. What a flipping load of hooey. To quote;
"Jaynes wrote that ancient humans before roughly 1000BC were not reflectively meta-conscious and operated by means of automatic, nonconscious habit-schemas. Instead of having meta-consciousness, these humans were constituted by what Jaynes calls the "bicameral mind". For bicameral humans, when habit did not suffice to handle novel stimuli and stress rose at the moment of decision, neural activity in the "dominant" (left) hemisphere was modulated by auditory verbal hallucinations originating in the so-called "silent" (right) hemisphere (particularly the right temporal cortex), which were heard as the voice of a chieftain or god and immediately obeyed.
Jaynes wrote, "[For bicameral humans], volition came as a voice that was in the nature of a neurological command, in which the command and the action were not separated, in which to hear was to obey."[1] Jaynes argued that the change from bicamerality to consciousness (linguistic meta-cognition) occurred over a period of ten centuries beginning around 1000 BC. The selection pressure for Jaynesian consciousness as a means for cognitive control is due, in part, to chaotic social disorganizations and the development of new methods of behavioral control such as writing.[citation needed]"
So the ancients deified every rock, river and mountain when they had no concept of consciousness!!!!!!! ERK. The mental flaw that appeared 3000 years ago was monolithic monotheism. A spiritual absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell, but it did validate top down authority and that was necessary for empire and eventually global community. Whatever works.
We don't know the source of consciousness, nor do we know the source of biological life. They are obviously related, so either biology came first and consciousness developed later, or there is some form of consciousness pre-existing biology and it manifested in material form, thus causing biological life, or both biological life and the most elemental form of consciousness are different aspects of the same process and came into being together and have evolved together.
Now the popular position among scientific reductionists is the first, yet actually the third would be more reductionistically efficient, since it would involve one mystery, rather than two. It would also help to explain why life is so tenaciously determined to manifest itself wherever possible.
So if we consider the third, then this conscious life form is bootstrapping itself upward through a series of fractal steps and the current situation might well be considered in terms of patterns which have come before, thus there is some "plan." Keep in mind our levels of social and technological complexity, for all we view them as without precedent, are really pale imitations of what biology was developing hundreds of millions of years ago. Government is society's central nervous system, finance is its circulatory system. White blood cells and the immune system in general are a form of policing. The average organism is something like sixty percent bacterial and viral free agents, thus a public(the genetic organism) and private sector. As for technology, have we really surpassed the brain for processing information, or have we just gone for quantity over efficiency and quality?
So that raises the question, what is the "grand plan?" Off hand, it would seem life is trying to turn the planet into a single organism, with humanity as the medium of the central nervous system. Equally obviously we are now only top predator in a collapsing ecosystem, yet that goes back to process. The reset button is about to get pushed in a big way, as we run through the amniotic fluid of oceans of fossil fuels. Will the result that arises be a somewhat more humbled and smarter humanity, one which will start caring for the larger organism, or just more hardened predators? Well, nature does have plenty of failures and false starts. She has eternity to play with. Time will tell.
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 12:36 GMT
"So the ancients deified every rock, river and mountain when they had no concept of consciousness!!!!!!! ERK."
That *was* their concept of consciousness, John. You only think it's hooey because your view is anthropocentric. Theirs was not.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 16:59 GMT
Tom,
It was Julian Jaynes' contention they lacked a concept of consciousness, that I was ridiculing.
I should have posted more of the
article and my point might have been clearer.
I realize it was off the particular topic of William's post, but as an observation, the post was very broad in its implications and so I was trying to tie it into the broader topic of consciousness and its relation to physics. The point being that teleological phenomena do not have to be mysterious, but may be expressions of larger patterns.
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 17:18 GMT
John, thanks for the clarification. Indeed, I think anyone who wishes to have a physical theory of consciousness without allowing a continuum of consciousness at creation is bound to fail. *Any* point of emergence denies the fundamental property of consciousness: the capacity to choose. Even the most elementary particle has it.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 17:40 GMT
Tom,
Soooo... If consciousness emerged as fluctuations in the void, as opposed to at the point of the singularity, it might therefore be possessed of far more degrees of freedom?
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 25, 2013 @ 10:03 GMT
"Soooo... If consciousness emerged as fluctuations in the void, as opposed to at the point of the singularity, it might therefore be possessed of far more degrees of freedom?"
Infinite, John. That's the same problem that arises with the singularity.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 25, 2013 @ 17:07 GMT
Tom,
You lost me on that one.
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 25, 2013 @ 17:21 GMT
John,
It's that all our answers "blow up" at infinity, whether infinitely large (quantum vacuum) or infinitely small (the singularity at creation).
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 25, 2013 @ 19:18 GMT
Tom,
Space isn't just small/large, but every size in between. Even where questions and answers coalesce out of the noise.
So, does the "noise" originate at a point, or any point?
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 26, 2013 @ 10:03 GMT
"Space isn't just small/large, but every size in between."
See, this is the problem with spitballing physics, John. How do you know that and how can you demonstrate that you know it?
"Even where questions and answers coalesce out of the noise."
And what do you even mean by that statement?
"So, does the 'noise' originate at a point, or any point?"
Or this one?
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 26, 2013 @ 16:39 GMT
Tom,
I apologize for my lack of mastery of the jargon, but it's a simple question; is the primary condition the point of the singularity, or the void of empty space?
Now obviously I assume you think the issue is fairly settled, but how many more theoretical patches will it take before you begin to question your faith?
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 26, 2013 @ 17:05 GMT
" ... it's a simple question; is the primary condition the point of the singularity, or the void of empty space?"
That's better, John. Now you can get somewhere. You can get to another question: Did the universe originate in a zero-dimension point or a two dimension plane? -- that's the fundamental issue of string-brane theory, in which there are no point particles.
"Now obviously I assume you think the issue is fairly settled, but how many more theoretical patches will it take before you begin to question your faith?"
I've always questioned my faith. New questions are what motivate new theories; potential answers are what create them. I don't disdain that potential, I delight in it.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 26, 2013 @ 19:42 GMT
Tom,
Why not a three dimensional void?
I know I'm just not math literate, but I just don't get how dimensionality can be considered as anything other than reductionistic modeling. We are not capable of formulating coherent wholistic observations about reality, so we need to distill out particular patterns, principles, etc. and then ask how they fit into the larger whole. It seems ridiculous to think something as basic as a two dimensional membrane is anything other than a conceptual convenience. Even the term "membrane" implies some thin third dimension.
I have to say, reading the likes of Woit, Smolin, Horgan and various others, there are cracks forming in the facade, like some Bengali garment factory, but the only real effort goes to plastering them over.
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 27, 2013 @ 10:14 GMT
"Why not a three dimensional void?"
Why not an infinite dimension void?
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 28, 2013 @ 14:09 GMT
Tom,
I certainly agree space is infinitely dimensional, as those three dimensions are coordinates used to locate points, in reference to pre-existing surfaces, such as that on which we stand. Without that basis, there would be nothing to locate any particular frame and so dimensionality would go to infinity, describing all possible frames.
Could you consider space as something other than a measure of points emerging from a singularity?
Is zero a reference point, or is it emptiness? (An unbounded, empty set.)
Is there another option?
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 28, 2013 @ 20:31 GMT
"Could you consider space as something other than a measure of points emerging from a singularity?"
I always do, John. That's why string theory makes more sense than general relativity.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 28, 2013 @ 23:43 GMT
Tom,
I've heard two descriptions of strings; They are sub-atomic particles as those tiny vibrating strings, or that they are point particles extended through time. The first, yes. I do think the wave/particle duality exists fundamentally. The second, not so much. Time as effect, not a real vector.
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T H Ray wrote on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 12:31 GMT
You're absolutely fearless, William.
You make me want to re-read FQXi member
Gregory Chaitin's newst book (it's short) *Proving Darwin: Making Biology Mathematical.* Chaitin -- effectively, in my opinion -- argues that evolving programs on a silicon substrate are no different in principle than the DNA programs that make up the software of our organic substrate. Indeed, where computing for its own sake is the issue, substrate is irrelevant.
So the "intelligent design" advocates who use mathematics to make their case for an ultimate designer, neglect that what they are *really* arguing, is that we humans are an artificial intelligence.
I favor Darwin, Leibniz and Chaitin. The same things that make us special are exactly the things that make the rest of the universe special -- the principles of self organization.
Or as the followers of the prophet Bokonon* sing:
"Nice, nice, very nice,
Nice, nice, very nice,
Nice, nice, very nice,
So many different people
In the same device!"
Tom
*Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. *Cat's Cradle*
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Blogger William Orem replied on Jun. 1, 2013 @ 15:31 GMT
Thanks, Tom. I always enjoy your thoughts. Wm
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Robert H McEachern wrote on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 13:02 GMT
A friend of mine recently induced me to consider the arguments Nagel presents in the first chapter of his book.
Here is a copy of my response:
Although I agree with several of his points, I did not find his overall claim or his analysis to be very convincing. For example, his statement on p. 6 that "It is prima facie highly implausible that life..." How has he deduced that it is...
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A friend of mine recently induced me to consider the arguments Nagel presents in the first chapter of his book.
Here is a copy of my response:
Although I agree with several of his points, I did not find his overall claim or his analysis to be very convincing. For example, his statement on p. 6 that "It is prima facie highly implausible that life..." How has he deduced that it is implausible? Most people, including many mathematicians, cannot successfully formulate even simple problems dealing with conditional probabilities, as in the famous Monty Hall Problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_hall_problem So why should we suppose that Nagel can?
In like manner, the Anthropic Principle (that any intelligent observer must, of NECESSITY, look back upon a past history that WAS conducive to his or her existence) is an argument, based on Reduction to Absurdity, that any hypothesis that claims that the a priori probability of life is small, must be absurd, given that the a posteriori probability of life, is known, with certainty, to be identically equal to 1.
Hence, his claim, on page 7, "That it has produced you, and me, and the rest of us is the most astonishing thing about it." is a bit like someone stating that his hypothetical probability analysis has demonstrated that the probability that the sun rose this morning is near zero; But it HAS risen. After the observation of this fact, the conclusion, deduced by the hypothesis, is absurd. Hence, there must be some bad assumptions within the hypothesis.
This bad assumption is reveled on the same page, when he said "dependent only on the laws of chemistry and physics." It is the same bad assumption that most physicists have made. It is not dependent ONLY on the laws. It is also dependent on the initial conditions. It fact, it is so STRONGLY dependent on the fact that the information content of the initial conditions is huge, in comparison to the information content of the laws, that the laws are rendered superfluous; a point I made in an essay submitted to the Foundational Questions Institute 2012 essay contest - http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1372
Nagel goes on to say (page 9) "natural selection cannot account for the actual history without an adequate supply of viable mutations, and I believe it remains an open question whether this could have been provided in geologic time..."
It is not an "open question", that bacteria can generate "viable mutations", to confer drug resistance upon themselves, on a time scale millions of times shorter than "geologic time". Again, his hypothetical probability analysis, is directly contradicted by observational facts.
Rob McEachern
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 13:19 GMT
Rob,
Nice response. Great point about bacterial (and viral) evolution, whjich I think is a dagger right to the heart of creationism and intelligent design. It is also casts doubt on the existence of any barrier between inorganic and organic life -- chemical self organization is sufficient.
Tom
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 8, 2013 @ 13:51 GMT
Rob and Tom,
While we perhaps agree in this respect, we should be aware of those who are ruling fqxi and are applauding to an essay by the founder of viXra.
Eckard
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Domenico Oricchio wrote on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 15:05 GMT
I also feel apprehension in listening to arguments of creationists (this is not the case): it is as if it were necessary, in the modern world, a scientific explanation of the universe, as if it were a theological explanation necessary to justify our supremacy over nature: we were created by God, therefore everything is permitted.
It would be nice, in this era, the discovery of other civilizations (perhaps more evolved than us): if life (and evolution, and consciousness) is not unique in the universe (a normal thing) then we are not an exception, we would not be alone: it is the only experimental demonstration sufficient to refute intelligent design.
It would seem wasteful, in a universe so vast, only one form of life.
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Domenico Oricchio replied on Apr. 26, 2013 @ 12:22 GMT
I read today an interesting blog on Backreaction (too complex comment in her blog, here is direct).
This contain the comment on an article: it is possible the separation of chiral particles using turbulence.
If the life is chiral, and the experiment give chiral separation, then it is possible that the life born in turbolence (like hydrothermal vent).
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John Merryman wrote on Apr. 24, 2013 @ 17:31 GMT
What bothers me is that scientists tend to offer up such wishy washy and complex rebuttals to theologians, because it would be unprofessional to verse their points in simple, basic arguments. Monotheism posits the spiritual absolute as a moral and intellectual ideal, yet logically a spiritual absolute would be the most raw essence of being from which consciousness rises, not some particular ideal from which it fell. Yes, it does assume some unknown source of consciousness, but why leave that ground to a bunch of zealots? If you get all self-righteously clueless about the very sense of being flowing through every sentient member of your audience, while the opposition at least acknowledges it, even if to control it for extreme political ends, you lose the fight before you even start.
Lots of other points can be made as well, such as that it was the polytheists who first formalized democracy, since a religion where the gods argue gets reflected in how people govern themselves.
Good and bad are not some metaphysical war between the forces of Go(o)d and the devil, but are the most basic biological binary code of attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. If we could ever get people thinking that point through, then maybe we could develop a society able to accept political responsibility for hard choices.
Also monotheism is inherently patriarchal, while a bottom up spirituality is inherently egalitarian.
The political consequence of a top down theology is that it validates top down rule and so enables monarchies, otherwise known as the divine right of kings. Eventually though, as one matures, the father figure goes from being the model one follows, to being the foundation from which one rises. Time we grow up.
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Clev Wald wrote on Apr. 25, 2013 @ 00:55 GMT
Smolin's new book is finally out. Should spark interesting discussion.
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 25, 2013 @ 03:09 GMT
The current understanding of time is the problem and more complex math is not the solution.
I can certainly agree with that.
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T H Ray replied on Apr. 25, 2013 @ 10:01 GMT
"Smolin's new book is finally out. Should spark interesting discussion."
It has already, on
Motl's and
Woit's blogs.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Apr. 25, 2013 @ 17:11 GMT
Tom,
I have to say Motl tends toward the politicized, which involves far too many logical parameters and resulting emotions, while Woit seriously limits who is allowed to comment, which is to say I fall far outside his line. Did see your comments there though.
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James Putnam wrote on May. 17, 2013 @ 21:20 GMT
"Nagel tells us near the outset. "It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.""
"Is it? An evolutionary biologist, at this moment, would interject a salient distinction between terms like "physical accident," as they are commonly misapplied when critiquing natural selection,...
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"Nagel tells us near the outset. "It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.""
"Is it? An evolutionary biologist, at this moment, would interject a salient distinction between terms like "physical accident," as they are commonly misapplied when critiquing natural selection, and the ability of imperfect replicators to conserve those random variations across time that yield selective advantage. I don't share Nagel's view that the latter state of affairs is highly implausible; I find it both illuminating and rather wonderful."
Advantage or disadvantage the result is complex and must have been already potentially existent before the new combination or even the old combination of particles came into existence. You do not get intelligent life from combinations unless it has meaning that reaches beyond that which it came from. You do not get the meaning either before or after for free just because of a comfortable feeling. Illumination about what? Nagle stated the premise wrongly. It is not highly implausible. It is obviously an easily achievable accomplishment for a universe that operates using properties that are not of theoretical physics. Relying upon theoretical physics reduces the plausibility to zero. You have to show the means in your equations. Since you do not know what cause is, you have nothing more than a catalogue of effects. Those effects reach very far beyond the capabilities of the properties of theoretical physics. Intelligent life can neither be predicted by nor explained by theoretical physics. Listing the effects is just listing the effects. There is nothing else, beyond those effects, for you to currently reveal as scientific findings.
"Of what concern are our respective personal intuitions about nature? It is highly implausible that the same yardstick becomes shorter when I throw it than when I hold it in my hand: but there it is."
It is not personal intuition that tells us there must be a cause for the evolution of intelligent life. It is not personal intuition that cause is an unknown to you. Learning effects has made it clear that they are not always the same as we experience. Pointing to length contraction for support in place of predicting intelligent life is a stretch not a contraction.
"Consciousness, cognition, value are simply not explicable--I am speaking now from Nagel's perspective--by psychophysical reductionism, and likely never will be; therefore even physical phenomena cannot ultimately be explained so long as such explanations are based on materialist, reductionist principles. No, the Cosmos as a whole shows far more evidence of something else going on . . . Tielhard De Chardin seems to be in the offing here . . . something as yet unknown . . . but something that is headed *somewhere*, as "principles of the growth of order" in nature are, "in [their] logical form, teleological rather than mechanistic."
"You heard right: Biology is teleological, indeed nature is teleological, clearly assembling itself toward some grand purpose (setting aside that whole "second law of thermodynamics" thing). This is probably the moment that earned Steven Pinker's description of "Mind and Cosmos" as "the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker.""
Shoddy reasoning for not falling for the unempirically supportable belief that dumbness can evolve into intelligence? Shoddy reasoning for not falling into line with the empirically unsupportable reasoning that the mechanical properties put forward to us by theoretical physics can account for intelligent life?
"(Nagel)"So my speculations about an alternative to physics as a theory of everything do not invoke a transcendent being but tend toward complications to the immanent character of the natural order." (In any event, such a God would be quite unlike the Judeo-Christian version. If anything, Nagel's intuition sounds more like what Gene Rodenberry suspected: that the universe as a whole is gradually growing into a self-consciousness that will, in time, bring itself retroactively into existence.) Rather, Nagel is only intending to lay the groundwork for how a non-materialist future science might be called for in order fully to explain the presence of mind in the order of nature."
Or for a non-materialist future science that might be called for in order to explain the first step, and every step that follows, of the existence of the mind.
"Or, if you like, the presence of nature in the order of mind."
Nature? What is that? Is that your answer for the existence of intelligent life? Nature did it? Lets go back to the beginning. How did Nature do it? This isn't a God question. Feeding the word supernatural back to me will be ineffective. Obviously life is not supernatural nor is its cause. They are what is natural even more than the inventions put forward by theoretical physics to substitute for the unknown nature of cause.
James Putnam
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John C Maguire wrote on Jun. 11, 2013 @ 03:06 GMT
I really enjoyed the book; kudos to you for providing a balanced/respectful reply to a body of ideas you don't necessarily agree with.
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Lev Goldfarb replied on Jun. 11, 2013 @ 03:27 GMT
John,
I should mention that although, generally, I also agree with Nagel, he still somewhat underestimates, less so than most others, what it would take to integrate the 'mental' into a scientific view. Of course, he does understands the critical importance of such integration.
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John C Maguire replied on Jun. 14, 2013 @ 04:32 GMT
Lev,
You may be right on that. But I think Bohm has left us a foundation to build off of. If you wouldn't mind me stealing a passage from my essay:
"That means we have quite a different principle of explanation because this wave function which operates through form is closer to life and mind. The basic quality of mind is that it responds to form not to substance. Therefore the electron has a mind-like quality, though it may not be consciousness as we know it. Consciousness [as we know it] may depend on a much higher organization of this mind-like quality."
Bohm's work may not be the penultimate solution, but it imbues me with a certain amount of optimism moving forward in solving this dilemma.
Regards,
John
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