By the way, I do believe that in an important way, humans are different in kind, i.e., that there is as you say a "discontinuity". But that's exactly why studying human beings becomes a different kind of endeavour from evolutionary biology.

Thanks.

1. Extinction is failure. Population is a good measure of evolutionary success.

2. Intelligence is, for certain, a plus point in survival. Humans are a success story measured by how we outnumber other species that exist at our scale. Intelligence is an asset in the game of survival.

3. The population of certain microbes exceeds by a factor of, sometimes, several millions the human. They are, most assuredly, successes too. But, they lack intelligence. — paraphrasing TheMadFool

Point 2 makes different claims. The first and last sentence are wrong, as I've been saying since my very first contribution to the discussion. What we can say is that intelligence has been an important part of human evolution and of the evolution of some other successful species. And if you want to talk about "our scale", (body size?), then sure, there's an argument for saying we're the most successful species of our approximate size and that this has largely been owing to our intelligence.

The paradox:

Population indicates brainless organisms are more successful than organisms with brains but we know, for certain, brains are the ultimate weapon - the thermonuclear warhead if you will - in the evolutionary race. In other words, population simplicter fails to capture the intelligence factor in the clear and obvious success of the human race. — TheMadFool

There is no paradox here. Brains are not "the ultimate weapon". There is no support for this claim in your argument or in biology. Maybe you can say that brains like ours are the ultimate weapon for animals like us, i.e., medium-large mammals, or whatever.

Population does fail to capture the success of human beings. You can measure success in different ways, and it has no strict definition in evolutionary biology, because evolution has no aims. You have not explained why you're troubled by the fact that population size doesn't reflect human success.

The proposed resolution:

Introduce another parameter which, together with population, will reflect the actual truth - the truth that

1. Humans are the most successful lifeforms on the planet

2. This success is entirely attributable to our intelligence — TheMadFool

So you want another measure of success, perhaps in combination with population, so as to prove (or reflect) what you already think is obvious, that humans are the most successful species on Earth? Why? Is it because you think this is lacking in evolutionary biology?

You can bring in variety of habitats, coverage of the planet, breeding success, and many other things to measure success. It's up to you. Have a look at ecological measures. But generally speaking, in merely evolutionary terms, humans are certainly not the most successful species on Earth. If you want, you can say that they're the most successful apes, or even mammals, or vertebrates. But it's arbitrary and has little if anything to do with evolutionary biology.

You may as well add, as your extra parameter, number of individuals of the species that have visited the moon, or number of books written, and you'll get the result you want: we win!*

However, I'll play your game. The extra parameter is ability to change its way of life in fundamental ways while its genome doesn't change or changes only in minor and unrelated ways, i.e., history. But this is just descriptive.

*Of course, you could just choose intelligence itself, and you've got what you need.

I'm honestly not sure if you're being honest, but...

To answer your questions, for the sake of argument let's say that evolutionary success can be measured by the number of individuals in a species, and let's call that number the population of that species. Now make your argument or point.

I note that you have also ignored Gnomon's central point, as you have done so far with mine.

I'm just puzzled by the fact though people continually speak of how humans, because of their intelligence, have come to dominate the planet, the actual numbers lead us to a different conclusion. — TheMadFool

The stuff you wrote before this is garbage, by the way. But here is where you make your point. So, if humans are to be considered as dominant on Earth, you'd expect them to be as abundant as, say, Prochlorococcus? That is crazy. Nothing you're saying hangs together or makes sense.

:up:

That could be interesting JC.

:gasp: :zip:

I would mainly just ask whether the near death journeys should be taken at face value for what they appear to represent or as something else? — Jack Cummins

We can believe the testimony, but suspend judgement on the interpretation, I would think.

Well, ok, but isn't that your bias? — Hippyhead

I'm not worried about that. If it's bias, I think it's one that's shared by philosophers and intellectuals in general. Of course, this can be questioned; or as you put it, can "be part of such a conversation, instead of the boundaries of such a conversation." But that's a conversation about the relative roles of personal experience versus familiarity with the literature, rather than about NDEs as such. Of course, nothing is stopping you from stunning people into awed silence with your insights in any thread you want. :cool:

To that my reply is simple: intelligence-wise, a dog is closer to a bird than either to humans. There's a gigantic discontinuity in the intelligence graph with only humans on one side and the rest of life on the other. This must count for something, right? — TheMadFool

I'm glad you're conceding that intelligence is not restricted to humans, as you claimed. Sure, human intelligence is immensely powerful. Does it count for something? In evolutionary terms, yes: it was an important part of our evolution. So what?

I'll take your word for it but anyone who claimed humans didn't gain from their more powerful brains would be lying to himself/herself as the case may be. Right? — TheMadFool

Yes they did gain, in the environment they evolved in and with the genetic endowment they had. Again, so what? Not all species require such intelligence to thrive.

I didn't know that the term "population" was not part of the biological terminology. What's the correct term then? Does it mean the same thing as "population"? — TheMadFool

I did not say that "population" is not part of biological terminology. Are you pretending that's what I said, or did you simply not read what I wrote? Either way, it won't do.

Back to the main issue...these numbers prove my point rather than anything to the contrary, no? — TheMadFool

What numbers? What point?

Perhaps there's nothing odd in all of this, nothing amiss with believing intelligence is an asset in the evolutionary game of survival for the simple reason that it did help humans in a very big way. — TheMadFool

Ok, so your point is that intelligence is an asset in evolution? As I say, it can be, for some organisms, in some environments. What reason do you have to go further?

This may contradict what I've been saying all along, I'm not sure, but the heart of the issue is the metric used in deciding evolutionary success. To my reckoning, as is evident from the OP and my other posts, success in evolution is measured by population size. This conforms with our intuitions of course; after all a population of zero means extinction which is just another word for failure, right? But, if we use population size, the problem is intelligence is no longer an attribute that's a deciding factor in evolution for the simple reason that humans don't make it to the top 10 or, quite possibly even to the top 100, list by population size. — TheMadFool

Why is this a problem?

what I'm quite certain about is that population size simpliciter doesn't cut it for measuring evolutionary success — TheMadFool

Why not? What do you regard as success in evolution?

I don't know what you're talking about. First, I was clear that my stated preferences were my preferences, and second, I don't think it's an unfair imposition to expect people to engage with research rather than speculate in ignorance like Jimmy down the pub.

Are NDEs scientifically explainable phenomenon? If they are, then why are we discussing an interesting, yet philosophically irrelevant, medical phenomenon in a philosophy forum? — Hanover

I don't think that scientifically explainable phenomena are philosophically irrelevant. There's a reason we have a category for "Interesting Stuff" that includes social sciences. It's partly because issues in these areas can be discussed philosophically.

I don't think so.

Also weighing in as a poster more than as a mod, I personally wouldn't find any of @Hanover's options interesting, even though he's right that they're legitimate philosophy. For me, the only things of interest would be some kind of anthropological enquiry, or some medical philosophy or medical sociology.

In anthropology, there are questions like: are NDEs universal across cultures? What role have NDEs played in the formation of supernatural beliefs and in the historical formation or maintenance of religious belief systems? What can the psychology of NDEs tell us about the relationship between culture and ways of describing and conceiving of consciousness?

Anyway, probably my main point is that there's been a lot of work on NDEs by various kinds of academics, and a discussion would be better off engaging with it to fend off unmoored speculation.

I kind of panicked as my post wasn't at all driven by Quining Qualia itself. I should have just brought it back to the text. — Kenosha Kid

It's really difficult to stick completely to exegesis when so much of the question of what Dennet might have been getting at requires some external 'rounding out' of what the issues are, so I sympathise with your posting dilemma. — Isaac

Though I haven't been contributing, I've been reading along and I have an opinion on this (Banno and fdrake may think differently but probably don't): so long as you've read the article and you're engaging with Dennett's views on qualia, then go for it. It doesn't have to be only exegesis. I posted a warning yesterday just because there were some people posting who had obviously not read the article and were here just to spout their anti-Dennett opinions.

Carry on :smile:

You could have just asked: "If intelligence endows evolutionary success, why is there only one intelligent species?"

It's a very odd question. Firstly--and without worrying too much about definitions--intelligence is a spectrum or a continuum, and it can be observed in many animals, especially among mammals and birds. Secondly, adaptations are adaptive in particular environments. Bacteria are very successful and they don't need intelligence for it. So "the belief that intelligence is a [generally] favorable evolutionary development in organisms" is not one that is held by biologists.

It seems that while intraspecies population (of humans to be specific) indicates that intelligence is a desirable trait to develop in the game of survival, interspecies population tells an entirely different story. — TheMadFool

Better put it like this: intelligence worked for humans and to varying degrees for some other species, but wasn't required for the success of many other organisms. Thus your mystery disappears, no?

And if you think humans are successful ... according to wiki, the average yearly worldwide number of individuals of the cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus is (2.8 to 3.0) × 10^27.

Price tag can be very high. But your choice of course. — Hippyhead

Yes, my grandfather had Parkinson's and increasingly severe dementia over a period of 15 years. In those circumstances, I would think fighting to the bitter end would lose any meaning.

Honestly, what scares me is that I try to time my departure too closely, and blow it. And then spend the next 12 years staring at the ceiling unable to move. 12 years that will feel like 2,000. My sister doing this right now. No end in sight. Could be 20 more years to come before it's over. Can you tell I'm terrified? — Hippyhead

I hope you find a way to deal with it, even if it involves defining waves out of existence.

I had an uncle who was mowing the grass on a hot 4th of July and had a heart attack. They said he was dead before he hit the ground. Now that's the way to go about things. — Hippyhead

I'd want at least a second or two to think, "ha, this isn't such a bad way to go". Or, "It's July 4th, why didn't I just relax by the pool?" (I'm not American but my birthday is July 4th, so it all checks out :cool:)

Yes, I do, would agree that such abstractions as we are exploring here will have limited emotional value. That said, I've been considering this for years, and for this nerd it does help create a different mental image than "when I die I lose everything".

There can be very practical implications of such a different mental image, to the degree it's possible to attain. As example, my mother died a very long hard death from Parkinsons because she wasn't a philosopher or religious, so she had nothing but the common "fight to the bitter end" philosophy to guide her. If they should tell me I have Parkinsons, I'm convinced my next step would be to get my affairs in order and then put a bullet in my brain. Part of this is a very ordinary fear of pain, and another part a sense that, um, the ocean is where I come from.

In agreement with your sentiment above I will remind you of the posts I shared above regarding how religions typically understand that this level of abstraction has limited practical use, and so they reach for other more accessible language. But philosophers tend to hate such language, so I am attempting to speak here in the local dialect, if you will. — Hippyhead

Yes, I think I understand. I also seek the right attitudes for dealing with these things, but for me, metaphysics doesn't help. Regarding my own death, often I think I would like to be a fighter to the bitter end, like your mother, but sometimes I think a peaceful equanimous death would be better. The significance of these things has a kind of autonomy and may as well be dealt with--this is ethics--whether they are illusions or mere patterns, or whatever.

I happened to be reading an interview with Daniel Dennett, in connection with another thread I've been reading along with, where he talks about his views on ontology and uses the word "pattern", as you do:

We have got all these atoms, and then we have the patterns that we discern among these atoms and four dimensions: space and time. Now the question is: Do the patterns have ontological significance? And for me the answer is: That's what ontology is. What other criterion could you ever use? What other reason could you ever have for your ontological presuppositions? — Dennett

I think we can interpret this as saying that it's precisely the patterns that can be said to significantly exist, rather than matter without form. This might also be Aristotle's view, namely that things exist as compounds of matter and form.

Ok then, please continue and share what you feel an appropriate definition would be — Hippyhead

Let's instead take seriously the position that people and waves and other such composite objects don't exist, that patterns in general don't exist. There might be a few philosophers who agree. I don't agree with it, but I'll go along with it for now.

Does it then follow that people don't die? I think not. Surely what follows is that dying describes the destruction of a pattern, or the conclusion of a patterny process, even if this isn't the end of any thing's existence.

If this is right, then there is little comfort in knowing that nothing has ceased to exist. It just means that existence wasn't the important thing all along.

Of course, the idea that our constituent existents will find their way into other patterns might be appealing, but it doesn't really detract from the seriousness of death.

It means if you haven't read the article and have nothing to say about it, scram!

Note to all participants: this is a reading group and I'll begin deleting comments from those who haven't read the article or who make no attempt to engage with it. @RogueAI, take note.

All right...

I think that what I'm saying, or at least tried to say, is that everything observable is patterns in energy, and that the patterns have no existence (weight and mass) of their own. And I'm certain I'm hardly the first person to say this, but am just expressing things already said many times in my own particular language. — Hippyhead

Nobody says that only things with mass exist, I don't think. Well, you do, but it seems eccentric. So as far as I can make sense of things, what you're saying is that everything observable is patterns in energy, which have no mass. Well, okay, if you like.

Why morn the end of the wave when the water and energy have gone nowhere? Yes, the pattern is gone, but it never existed in the first place. — Hippyhead

Because it's the wave that I observed, that I loved, that was part of my world, and that is gone. I don't give a shit about the water and energy. You see the problem? It's patterns that are significant, even if you define them out of existence.

Existence usually means 'to stand out'. Thus a thing exists if it stands out from its background. This would be why Schrodinger notes that as well as what exists there is 'the canvas on which they are painted'. For a Venn diagram a set does not exist unless it stands out from the blank piece of paper.

The waves 'exist' because they stand out. The ocean does not stand out but is what existents stand-out from. Existents are phenomenal, having only a dependent-existence, therefore are not truly real. What is truly real is the background but this does not exist in the sense of 'standing-out'. Thus nothing really exists. — FrancisRay

I like that way of talking about existence, but you don't make much use of it. If waves do exist, i.e., they stand out phenomenally against a background, then you cannot say that they do not exist without redefining "exist". You seem to do that when you say that things that exist "are not truly real" (whatever that means), and take that implicitly to entail that they don't exist after all. Why? It must be because you think that to exist is not in fact to stand out phenomenally against a background--which I guess is why you use the quotation marks around "exist"--but rather is to be "truly real" and to appear to stand out, which is by definition impossible.

So you began by offering an interesting way of thinking about existence, but then immediately dismissed it because it's phenomenal and not "truly real", without explaining what this means or why it should justify a dismissal.

I didn't say anything about forms — Hippyhead

You did.

C'mon, give me a little break, you're sinking in to automated rejectionism mode. — Hippyhead

No, I really do think your definition of existence is wrong, and obviously so, and I don't think it's a popular view either in philosophy or on the street.

EDIT: I've just remembered that there is a view in philosophy called mereological nihilism, according to which you and I and waves, and anything else that's made of smaller bits, do not exist: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/material-constitution/#Eli

Seem the same thing to me. — Hippyhead

So you agree that forms and patterns are the same thing, but you've said that forms of energy or matter can be destroyed, after saying that patterns cannot.

I'm using the general man in the street definition, has weight and mass — Hippyhead

Did you ask this man in the street if light and gravity, governments and currencies, species and rectangles, love and beauty, pieces of music and rivers exist? Anyway, to my knowledge there is no such philosophical position on existence as the one you mention.

My nitpicking is to try and make things clear and coherent, but aside from all of that, maybe you're a modern-day Heraclitus: all is flux, you never step in the same river twice.

What we value is thought. — Hippyhead

If by "we" you mean philosophers, yes sure, but when I said "we" I meant people, and people value more than mere thought.

Einstein says that energy can't be either created or destroyed, so ok, yes on that one. But the water could conceivably be boiled away from every planet in the universe, the atomic structure could be dismantled entirely etc. Does this satisfy your question? — Hippyhead

I don't think so. So according to you, it is not just matter and energy that exist, but matter and energy that has taken various forms, e.g., water? What is the difference between a form and a pattern? What makes a water molecule different from a wave, such that one exists and the other doesn't? You've mentioned "our definition" of existence a couple of times now, but this is far from a settled question in philosophy, and you haven't been explicit about it. Why would anyone agree with a scheme in which matter and energy cannot be destroyed, but molecules can, but waves and people can't?

Anyway, let's say that we cannot die and waves cannot be destroyed. Where does that leave us? Why is that better than saying we die while the matter and energy that we were made of remains? How is that any different? What we value, in fact what we're actually talking about when we talk about death, destruction, and even existence, is the patterns. All you've done is redefine the words involved.

EDIT: This all seems to me rather like when people say that solid things are not really solid (which is a misunderstanding of physics or misuse of language).

According to the theory, you can not be destroyed because, as a pattern, you don't exist. — Hippyhead

But things that exist cannot be destroyed either, as you stated. My point was that you seem to be assuming that to be destroyed, you have to exist, even while saying that such things that exist--matter and energy--cannot be destroyed either.

So maybe nothing can be destroyed? But you did claim that patterns are created, when you said that a wave was "a pattern created by energy applied to water". But surely something that can be created can be destroyed, no?

So I cannot be destroyed because I'm not the kind of thing that cannot be destroyed? :chin:

This again? Time to move on, HH. Work on improving your own posts.

This does not look promising, The Opposite.

ok

Well that's the grown-up assumption as far as I'm concerned. That debate is silly, in my opinion, but that doesn't mean I'll delete or move such a discussion. Sam's discussion was along those lines but as I recall it wasn't put in the Lounge, despite being crackpottery.

How do I get a NDE thread onto the main page? I'm not sure if it's considered a philosophical area. — The Opposite

By writing a good opening post. The topic can be approached philosophically, but even purely psychological, neurological, or anthropological approaches are fine too. I'd be less sympathetic to a discussion in which people actually took these studies to be evidence of an afterlife.

If you're going to complain about someone publicly, I think you should be specific. I don't see any evidence of unmodlike comments over the past few days. In any case you could flag the comments that you don't like, or tell me about them privately.

Street is a very good moderator. So far, that outweighs his less obviously beneficial idiosyncrasies.

I'm closing this now.

Cool post :up:

:up:

I read "Quining Qualia" this morning, to try and work out what Dennett was saying and make some contribution to this discussion, but then realized that it had nothing to do with what people are talking about here. I suggest a reading group.

:up:

I was a bit startled to see that everything I had written on this site, even my own photo, was showing up for anyone to read without anyone signing into the forum website. I don't blame the administrators of this site. It merely shows that Google, in England at least, is watching us at all times. — Jack Cummins

Like all public websites, this one can be accessed by web crawlers like Googlebot, and it gets crawled a lot because it ranks highly and changes frequently (this is why the Google search engine is so useful.) Only posting comments is confined to authenticated users, not reading them.

If you're concerned, we could change your username now and within a few days or weeks, any connection between your real name and this website will disappear, because the relevant pages in Google's index will be crawled again, and the old name effectively overwritten. Probably.

Sorry for going off topic people.

Which I think clearly, if inadvertently, highlights the basic philosophical contradiction within Dawkins' view, which is that what an Aristotelian would call 'efficient and material causes' are the only real causes. It is precisely the idea of 'final cause' - 'the reason that something exists' - that has been eliminated, in Dawkins' understanding. And so effectively, that he can't even understand why someone would ask such a question. — Wayfarer

That's fair. Or he might be saying that there is no use looking for a "why" in the way that we look for causes in science (or even religion), and that we have to use our own intelligence and our eminently reasonable liberal values to decide on our own existential purpose. In which case, he might not be entirely rejecting final causes, but merely separating them from science.

All the posturing, spite and confusion on this thread are ideological in nature. — Olivier5

I think this is about right, but it applies to both sides. Very disappointing.

The reason Midgley was furious about Gene the Shellfish was that it described human beings as slaves to their genes. Such full biological determinism is eminently ideological -- it tells people that they are not free -- and it's an ideology with dark history (eugenism, racism, slavery, nazism, etc.). — Olivier5

It's true that The Selfish Gene is partly ideological—I think that all popular biology is inescapably ideological—but it's in the realm of Hobbes rather than Hitler, and with a certain liberal and "scientific rationalist" understanding of the Enlightenment. It has little in common with Nazism.

Because what you miss in the passage above is that Dawkins's moral and political message is that, thanks to our unique intelligence and scientific society, we are not slaves to our genes, that we are free—precisely the opposite of what you imply he's saying.

We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators. — The Selfish Gene