but the situation is different with Heidegger:

Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. But this going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that metaphysics belongs to the “nature of man.” It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself. (What is Metaphysics)

Seems to be straying into the mystical there. Requiring understanding and knowing not just through the lens of the mind. But from other parts of the being.

The universe contains many laws which govern how the universe operates e.g. laws of physics. The question that is puzzling me right now is why are there laws in the first place and why is the universe not lawless instead ?

Because laws are harder more complex and elegant to formulate than if there was no laws at all, why are they in nature ?

If it was lawless there’d probably be no life and no one to ask these questions

There are lots of interesting answers given in this thread. However I like to approach ideas about nature from a different view point and compare and contrast from two different view points. To perform a kind of calculus.

So what’s been presented in this thread are ideas about nature derived from what we find before us when we are born into this world. Including an already fully formed society and culture with all the knowledge of humanity. A world where physical material works in a predictable way following laws of physics etc. and we inhabit bodies which have evolved to inhabit this world over millennia and are very finely tuned to this environment and interacting with each other and other plants and animals. Resulting in a stable complex persistent world, that to a large extent we take for granted as a peaceful normal state of affairs.

Now by contrast I will offer an alternative perspective on this same state of affairs from the spiritual dimension.

Imagine a God, or being with immense powers to create, or generate things. This being has a ground, or substance, a blank canvas of material potentiality to work with. Such that the being can order it into a multitude of forms and complexities at will.

Now imagine that this being creates a world of interacting beings, an angelic world. This angelic world will have a nature and forms dictated by what is required for them to have a form that can be interacting beings that are able to interact. They need to be separate, more than one, they need to be able to act independently of the other beings. They need a common environment, or place in which to be and to interact. So they need a space and some time. Rather like virtual interacting bots that can be created on a computer screen. Now we already have a few basic laws of nature. These laws are requirements, necessities for this little world of angelic beings to exist in this ground and interact.
When it comes to their environment, how they interact, and what they do while interacting. That depends on what they have and can do within the constraints of those few laws of nature that they have. So they may well be able to speed up time, slow it down, reverse it. They may be able to do the same with size, appearance, even change and alter the place they inhabit totally. Merge with each other move through each other. Have bodies made up of other groups of beings etc etc etc.*

Now imagine the creator being decides to increase the complexity of this little world of angels. Inevitably there will be more requirements for laws of nature necessitated. There may be more than one kind of being. Which means they will need to be differentiated into groups, with their differentiated modes of communication. There might be a broader, more complex kind of place or world that they inhabit. Which means there would need to be more stable structures to work with. There would have to be rules for what the individuals in that world can do the change the world, or other beings on a wim. Because it would interfere with the stability of the more complex system they inhabit.

So we have a more complex world with differentiated structures, beings, rules of behaviour etc, which are necessary for that degree of complexity. Constraining the angelic beings in what they can do. Even though, these beings may still have full control at will of their form, the forms around them and how they interact. They inevitably have to conform to the rules of that degree of complexity, to remain there, and sustain it.

Now let’s jump forward a long way into a vastly more complex world of angels. There would at some point of complexity be a requirement for more solid objects, physical material. There would have to be more formal constraints on what each individual angel could do in that world. There would be more rigid laws of nature. The angels can still magically change anything at will. But they are strongly required to abide by the laws because it could have far reaching consequences in that world it they are not fully observed. They might be a history of disasters when beings had defied the laws, resulting in the creator being modifying the angel’s limiting their ability to change things. This might include encoding things so that they can’t access certain abilities without knowledge of the codes.

Eventually the physical material they are working with would become so constrained with such strict laws and the angels would be so limited in their abilities that they would have to learn to inhabit physical bodies in that world with no magical abilities left, no knowledge of the creator being, or the more foundational rules of the world works. In a sense they would be imprisoned in physical bodies in an entirely physical world.

We have come full circle in this alternative cosmogony to the world we inhabit from a different world, the world of spirit. However the same laws of nature apply, for seemingly different reasons. But are they really any different, they are equally necessary in each world. Indeed we could be in either and have no idea which one we are really in, or have no way of finding out.

*what I am describing correlates closely with the cosmos as described in Hinduism.

No worries, people around here are always willing to help. Although as I say, the consensus tends to follow what is accepted by academic philosophy. There are other schools and religions that see it differently, so it’s not necessarily decided

Hey man, I’m the resident mystic here (or at least the one who admits it). I know what you’re saying and have many ideas about this stuff. Ideas I couldn’t explain to the others, or if I could they’d dismiss it as wishful thinking or something like that. You have to accept that the people here are philosophers and have a way of thinking and talking about things.

It may be more a case of them not knowing how to discuss what you are presenting in a way that’s meaningful for both them and you. Or they might think there’s just so much to unpick there that it’s just not worth even trying.

I’m happy to discuss it, but you have to accept that I might not be able to grasp just what you are thinking, because it is a personal experience for you. But we might be able to reach some common understanding.

I thought we’d already got there with the idea of spacetime. One point at the Big Bang inflated into a near infinite quantity of points forming a network of points, extended over space and time. With the voids between them producing a space and the interactions between them preducing time, or duration, cause and effect. Resulting in a vast space, the universe and a vast period of time. Followed by the emergence of variation forming the complexities we see before us.

can't think of a single time I have encountered a description from a different political or philosophical direction though. That would actually be the shocking thing in context, something like an appeal to platonic solids as properly "platonic" would be more outrageous than the excrement.

Yes, I know. (although anyone who hasn’t read any philosophy would have no idea what that is). It’s always something cool, or hip, like the way images of Che Guevara were everywhere back in the day.

Although political content in art goes back a long way. What we have here is a loss of direction, where is the equivalent of the radical art movements of the 20th Century, like cubism, modernism, abstract expressionism, now? There’s nothing, it’s as though it’s all been said already, there’s nothing else to say. Or maybe it’s gone underground, I haven’t kept up with what’s happening in virtual, or AI art. Most of the major art exhibitions these days are retrospectives. All the publicly available works by a famous artist gathered together, which then go on tour of the worlds prestigious galleries to draw in the crowds.

Then there is the issue of money in art, it’s sold its soul. Damian Hurst’s diamond skull, For The Love Of God illustrates this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_Love_of_God

Damian Hurst’s response to the grotesque capture of the art world by big money.

Yes, I quite like talk of zombies.

And therefore I'm exploring alternatives - but the alternatives still need to account for the very obvious dependencies on the physical I mentioned. It seems to be that this could most simply be accomplished by supplementing a physicalist account with something more (e.g. some sort of ontological emergence). But no one seems to be going in that direction. Rather, they're suggesting starting from scratch - treating the mind (or thoughts) as something fundamental and (it seems) unexplained.

I haven’t offered anything more in response to yourself because I wasn’t sure what you were asking for. Now that you have asked it, I can respond.
I wouldn’t offer an ontological emergence, in the sense that consciousness (as observed in higher order mammals) emerges from complexity of computation in the brains of animals, or the complexity of nervous systems, or other biological systems. Although I would offer the idea that a rudimentary consciousness emerges from cellular biology, which is the ground for the higher order consciousness we are addressing. As such this consciousness is present in all cellular and multi cellular organisms.
But I do offer an emergence of a unit of complex being, which equates with what is generally referred to as a soul (baggage accepted).

Strictly speaking the physical world could have evolved higher order mammals without this unit, which are not conscious(we don’t know the precise role played by consciousness in the life of higher order mammals and if it is a necessary condition). They could all be entirely unconscious and the world would be identical to the world we live in.

So we have an emergent part of a being which has no physical requirement. But in our ignorance of the truth of reality, we cannot independently observe it, or analyse any necessary role it plays. Any analysis of the physical world doesn’t require it, or identify it.

We are left blind to the reality in the absence of any greater explanation of the reality we find ourselves in.

It was a bit of both. They were nice people, ordinary, down to earth art students, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. They were surprised when their fame first happened and quickly realised that producing sensationalist works, just fuelled the media scrum. Some of them realised, or already knew that the establishment had lost its way and we’re basically given carte Blanche to do whatever they want and it would be regarded as credible High Art. As long as the art world was being reinvigorated, anything goes.
Much of the work was taking the Mickey out of the establishment and seeing how far they could go without being censored. And then when some were censored* it just fuelled it even more.

Charles Satchii, a wealthy advertising mogul, saw an opportunity and set the whole thing in motion on the world stage. Another example of big money becoming involved in the art world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_British_Artists

*there was a work which included a dead human foetus, which was censored.

Yet I don't think this is regression. It's simply art transforming to an institution that will desperately want to do something new

Yes, definitely. I’m referring more to the tearing down of traditions in art. Now we have a clear space for new art movements to move into.
There are lots of new exciting movements in art, a favourite of mine is a revivification of nature and landscape in art with the recent work of David Hockney for example,
https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/exhibitions/david-hockney-a-bigger-picture
Who has a major exhibition in Paris at the moment.

I am largely immune to art (it mostly bores me rigid) but why would you argue this? Is your dislike of modern art rooted in a preference for classical and formalist traditions, and in the sense that contemporary art conflicts with your ideas of beauty and moral coherence?

I do like a lot of modern art, but I saw the art establishment self immolate during the 1980’s and 90’s.
This was actually the post modern period in art. It had been left with a radical ideology by the modernists (1950-70’s) and interpreted it as a requirement to tear down, the last vestiges of formalism and tradition in High Art. To debase art to the point that art was whatever the artist says it is. This resulted in a race to the bottom of art and art exhibitions, where sensationalism, shock value was the goal. I attended all the exhibitions in London at the time during the 1990’s and realised that art as anything meaningful had died, to be replaced by shocking sensationalised works, where the goal was to get newspaper headlines about how extreme and perverted art had become.

If you’re going to argue that, you may as well add that there hasn’t been a progression in science and technology either.

Well I will argue it with three examples. The arts are a matter of conception, expression and forms of beauty. Something which evolves and devolves with changes in societies and cultures. Science and technology are quite different pursuits.
(Forgive my lack of pictures, as I don’t have an image hosting account at the moment, so will have to link to articles about the pieces.)

Firstly pre-Cycladic art reached a high standard in depiction of beauty and refinement between 5,000 and 2,000 BCE. Such refinement was arguably not equalled until cubism in the 20th Century. I suspect that Picasso for example, copied, or was influenced by it (along with examples of African tribal art).
https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/cycladic-figures

Secondly, the blue vase of Pompeii, the skill in design and execution may not have been equalled since the time it was made in Ancient Rome.
https://www.interno16holidayhome.com/2019/02/22/discovering-the-blue-vase-of-pompeii/

Thirdly, the Pantheon in Rome. An architectural gem, which may not have been equalled in the 2,000years since it was built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome

Architecture has rarely reached such heights of design and execution. Over the intervening periods. And indeed the great pyramid of Giza, is such a mind boggling feat of construction. It is probably only now, with laser technology, that we have the ability to reproduce it.

I wouldn't say that. Simply after the technique was basically universal, which any art school could teach, then the focus was simply to have other techniques than photorealism. That in the end you had modern art isn't at all a death of high art.

I should have qualified what I meant about the death of art. I mean of the art being produced at the time of modernism, not the art of previous periods. In the art establishment during the 20th century what constituted High Art of that period was what the art establishment deemed to be High Art being produced at that time(during the 1950’s and 60’s). It has always been like that to a lesser extent. So when someone in the art establishment talks about High Art, they are usually referring to the art being produced at the time they are saying it. This is also reinforced by the current fashion in art of the time, which follows the zeitgeist. So during the modern period, what constituted High Art evolved very quickly through the process of developing from Impressionism, cubism, surrealism and expressionism, into modernism.

It was this current idea of what was High Art, which died a death into modernist absurdity, sometime during the second half of the 20th Century.

During the post modern period, High Art lurched from one development to another culminating in conceptual art, which was nonsense asserted as High Art and grotesque perversions of modernism, asserted as High Art.

Any particular substantive sense we attempt to assign to what is within the living present will always be a higher order constituted product, merely subjectively relative and i. need of bracketing and reduction, with no metaphysical justification in itself

This is where I suspected metaphysics would end up (not having read it sufficiently myself). Rather like the mystic, standing beside the door of the unknown. Unable to proceed any further, hence the appeal (from the mystic) for guidance from the other side of that door. Where is the equivalent appeal from the Metaphysician, I wonder? To AI perhaps.

As I read that back, I read Hal, of 2001 A Space Odyssey, rather than AI. A fitting metaphor, I think.

The abilities, or skills in the creative arts ebbed and flowed with the prosperity and decline of societies. There hasn’t been a progression in high art particularly, just an expansion into the depiction and expression of subjects and ideas that weren’t previously represented, for whatever reason, in the medium. Culminating in the radicalism of modern art and now in the post modern era, High art has died. Ravaged and crucified by the modern and post modernists. Leaving the ground open for new artistic expression, an explosion of every conceivable kind of art unhindered by previous constraints. The creative arts are struggling a bit, primarily because they require more skilled craftsmen. Many crafts, including my own, are dying. Or their remnants remain in settings where there is sufficient patronage to make a living. Although, the creative content will be preserved and reproduced using advanced technology. Highly skilled robots, will take over, as there will still be the demand for the product.

So having neutered Congress by purging it of any non-MAGA members, Trump has now successfully neutered the judiciary, the last bastion against his plainly totalitarian impulses.

Shame, America. Shame.

Yes, indeed, this is a dark day in America’s history.

You know when Trump used the f word about Iran and Israel not knowing what the f*ck they’re doing, last week. When the Israel, Iran ceasefire was broken, by Israel before it had even begun. Israel had put out a statement that their planes were in the air to retaliate against the so called violation by Iran. Trump was very angry and said they’re turning the planes back, the ceasefire will hold. He must have told Netanyahu in no uncertain terms to call those planes back. And Israel must have obeyed his command, because the ceasefire did hold.

Rational belief is justified belief- i.e.having reasons to believe some proposition is true. "X is possible" is not a justification to believe X rather than ~X. Possibilities are endless.

I don’t work with beliefs, I don’t hold any other than those that are required to live a life. When it comes to questions of existence, I hold none. This also pertains to denying any beliefs, I don’t deny any either. This might sound radical, but it isn’t, it’s realistic. Because as I have already pointed out, we really have no idea, not a clue, what is out there. Gnomon seems to conclude that this is a barren denialism, or something. It isn’t, it’s is to be open minded.

So in a sense I am standing at the door of the unknown along with the Metaphysicians who have reached the extent of what they can deduced using logical inferences.

So what do we do now? How do we make progress?

Perhaps it is a pursuit like the pursuit of an artist, to make progress. An artist exercises intuition and a creative flair to improve their work. It is a journey, with events and experiences along the way. But crucially, the artist is moving forward without relying on rational thought alone. It is in the mix, but not controlling events, or progress. There is an interplay between thought, intuition, happenstance and the creation of artistic content. The artist may refer to pieces made previously, to find inspiration, a feedback loop. Also there may be means a bit like calculus, quadratic equations. Like shimmying up a chimney with one foot being intuition, the other foot, a way of life and the hands interaction with nature.

I apologize if I sound like I'm criticizing you or anyone else

No worries, My skin is like elephant hide.

This depends on the unjustified assumption that we actually have the capacity to see around those veils, and it places unwarranted trust in one's intuitions.

You seem to have smuggled in the word assumption there.
How can it be deemed unjustified if we don’t know if there are ways to go around, or unlock the veils, or not. Or what, or where the veils are? Surely there is justification to enquire, whilst under the realisation that we have reached the limit of empirical enquiry.

Likewise with your word unwarranted, I haven’t said anything about intuition, other than that it is used in some way. We use our intuition all the time, already, indeed it helps us sometimes when working with logic and likely plays an important role in understanding philosophy, for example.

All I’m describing is a different way of working things out than using reason alone. There is a system of calculating things about the world and the self from the use of intuition, interaction with nature and following an appropriate way of life. Where these three means are used together and in sequence to work things out. To arrive at an understanding without arriving there via rational thought. This and other means have been practiced for millennia from a time before there was much in the way of academic learning.

However, my impression of our Cosmos --- based in part on Modern Cosmology, Quantum Physics, and Information Theory --- is of a complex self-assembling system, that is motivated by a world-creating impulse (BB) of Cause & Laws. From such a simple yet powerful beginning, awesome complexity & beauty have evolved --- despite unfit mutations subject to de-selection. And that observation of gradual improvement implies, to more sanguine thinkers, some kind of long range Purpose, implemented in an ongoing Process, not in a six day Genesis fait accompli. I could post a list of my "company" of secular thinkers who reached a more positive & progressive understanding. But for brevity, I'll only mention the one I'm most familiar with : A.N. Whitehead*2.

What I have said doesn’t mean I don’t consider cosmogony’s like this. It’s a good philosophy as I said the last time we spoke.

However we are limited to what we can know in our world. This can also be extrapolated to some universal truths. But we can’t know the extent to which this knowledge applies to realities beyond our world. It could be a pale, or partial, representation of the reality beyond. As such we can do no more than speculate on what there is.
I am aware that there are ways, as you say, to work out what nature is up to and the direction it is going in. With the caveat that it may be only a partial picture and we don’t know what is missing from the picture. It could be something which entirely transforms it, or acts as a key to unlock realities hidden from us.

You’re aiming at the wrong target. It’s the human condition, not what thinkers have worked out, that is the problem here.

I will say one thing. Trump has kicked Netanyahu’s ass. This is progress. Now he needs to kick Putin’s ass. Then at least he might have a chance of getting that peace prize.

All we can do is to try and peek back layers of the onion, but sooner or later we'll get to a point beyond which there can be empirical verification, and this would limit our ability to explore even deeper. We may already be there, in some areas.

Mysticism got there a while back. They realised that mental enquiry alone is blind, there are natural veils in our and the world’s make up, which prevent progress in that direction. That if progress is to be made it requires other avenues of inquiry, to bypass, or see around those veils.

There are three avenues I have found, intuition, nature and way of life. Of course mind is present, but not in control.

But, IMHO, Calleman's unorthodox method came much closer to answering the "why?" questions. Any questions? :smile:

Questions of why and purpose are inaccessible to us because they involve the purposes of who, or what brought the world into being. It might only be possible to understand, or map those purposes from the perspective of that agency (this also applies if the agency is unconscious). We are mere specs of dust in comparison.

This is not speculation, it's inference that there is an ontological foundation to reality. The alternative is an unexplainable infinite series of causes and an infinite series of composition.

I would say that logical inferences about the unknown, or the fundamentally inaccessible are speculative. However it is preferable to the infinite series and composition, which throw up illogical inconsistencies. To this extent, I agree with you. I would add a third category here though. That the reality of the origin of what is, is beyond our capacity to understand. It may even be beyond the reach of logic.

Regarding intelligibility: I agree the actual ontological foundation may be unintelligible - but that has no bearing on the logic that concludes simply that there IS a foundation. (If we deny logic, this undercuts reason - making it self-defeating.)

But we must consider that logic may not be able represent the origin in a meaningful way. Or that we can’t rely on it. This is not to deny logic, but rather to accept it’s limitations. Likewise the limitations of humanity’s abilities to work things out, or to understand things.

There are other things to consider, apart from our limitations, that the reality might be counterintuitive, it may be totally orthogonal to what we know about the world. It might be inside out, or running backwards in time, or spanning time. It might be identical to what we know, or imminent, but that we are blind to it. Also there are transcendent issues, but I won’t go into them here.

Basically what I’m saying is that we really don’t know anything, this is not to say we are unable know it. It might be veiled from us.

Maybe. I believe there's a better reason to think the past is finite than infinite, but lots of smart people disagree with me.

I agree with you and really these smart people aren’t all that smart, because the infinite past thing is just a way of putting off the inevitable. We don’t know how something could have come from nothing, or how something endures for infinite time and space. So we are left with nothing to say.

But there might not be an absolute answer to why it exists. I argue that any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation."

This is just speculation, all we know is that we don’t know and any speculation we do indulge in will be tainted by anthropomorphism. Where the anthropomorphism refers to the the human mind and its contents. Also that the answers we seek may be inconceivable to the human mind, or unintelligible.

I find the activity of thinking the most interesting and important concept in this conceptual space, which is why I assign the salient and important word consciousness to it.

Yes, but you don’t need to assign consciousness to it, just intelligence.

Or are you saying that consciousness is necessary for the degree of intelligence you observe in the LLM? Or in other words that it can’t perform those tasks if it is not conscious?

Going back to consciousness, we only know of it in biological organisms. Many of them don’t do any thinking, or very small amounts of it and the more primitive of them are only thinking unconsciously. So they as a being, are not aware that they’re thinking, or why. But they are clearly conscious of being alive and of their environment.

Also if intelligent activity is necessary for the emergence of consciousness, then computers with quite primitive intelligent abilities, on a level with these animals, would be conscious. But it is only in the highly intelligent computers, that people claim to observe consciousness.

Both these reasons suggest that consciousness is being attributed to intelligent LLM’s because they appear to be conscious. While ignoring the reality that they are like that because they are highly intelligent, rather than that it is because they are conscious.

Consciousness is not a result of mental activity. It’s a result of cellular life and in multi cellular organisms with a central nervous system. It becomes self conscious, or self aware. But it’s a category error to think that consciousness is emergent from mental activity, or intelligence.

I see. So, the NYTimes is drinking the Trump Koolaid. Is that what you're claiming?

Yes, they all are, every establishment is. There’s no credible opposition left, can’t you see that yet.

Yes, but now there's a UN agency, and the UN is no friend to Israel, backing up Israel's claim

Well they realised the U.S. and Israel couldn’t be trusted when Trump tore up the deal with Iran in 2016. This point became inevitable then. So much winning.

What Kool aid are you talking about?

The one where you don’t criticise what Trump is doing and treat him as a credible leader rather than a clown.

The NYTimes is solid, though.

The NYTimes has been on the cool aid since everyone kissed the ring last November.

Netanyahu claimed Iran was 2 weeks away from the bomb in 1992 and has continued to repeat if ever since.

What makes infinity woo-woo?

Well it does have a meaning in mathematics, as an endless sequence of numbers, or unbounded set. But this is not encompassing any endless, or infinite quantity, it is only a symbol representing an open ended sequence.
But that’s as far as it goes for rationality. When one tries to apply it to anything else, the logical conclusion becomes illogical. I could give examples, but I think we are all familiar with what that looks like.

Why consider any specific spiritual account? I can acknowledge it's possible, but the possibilities are endless, so what's the point?

So are the possibilities for the origin, ground of physical manifestation, the possibilities are endless.

It's like considering what other forms of life that may exist elsewhere in the the universe, choosing one specific, hypothetical form and then drawing conclusions about the nature of aliens. Indeed, it's possible that there exist Tralfamadorians, who communicate through tap-dancing and farts, but a bare possibility like this has no practical significance to me.

Yes and the Flying Spaghetti Monster might have spewed out atoms in the Big Bang. But that’s not my preference either.

IOW, something more than mere possibility is needed to make it worth giving any serious consideration to.

There are two parts to this;
Firstly, it’s unlikely that the human mind with its bias, I mentioned earlier and the limitations suggested by Wayfarer*, would be likely to come up with serious possibilities. We really are blind in this regard.

Secondly, philosophy has already addressed this in Idealism for example. So rational possibilities have been explored there.


Furthermore there are cosmogonies which have stood the test of time. These can be found at the heart of various religions. While their stories vary, parallels can be drawn between them. In these traditions the truth or reality about religion, or existence was shown to people in revelation. This is the only way to go beyond our inherent blindness (mentioned in italics above). This knowledge informs the philosophy of the school. Normally someone considering these alternatives spends years studying the philosophy of and experiencing the practice of one, or more of these schools. Until they develop a body and breadth of knowledge. So they become fluent in the milieu, rather like a philosopher becomes fluent in the milieu of philosophical thought.


* “He is arguing that evolutionary biology may account for how animals adapt and survive, but that this in itself does not provide grounds for us to believe that an argument is true, when, according to those criteria, it might simply be adaptive”.

As I said in my earlier post, I'm suspicious of using this explanatory gap as an excuse to believe in some sort of spiritualism.

If you remove the word believe from that sentence and replace it with the word consider the word excuse loses it’s relevance.

Infinity not woo woo!
Come on.

logic is computation and logical structures are software, by analogy. This is developed in living bodies that have a central nervous system. Living bodies that don’t have a central nervous system, have an encoded system of responses to stimuli.

The material world has an inherent logical structure due to cascading effects of forces between atoms and groups of atoms and sub atomic particles. This is an inherent result of the extension of spacetime. The aforementioned encoding is an inherent result of the development of living bodies and the aforementioned computation is the inherent result of the development of the central nervous system.

The question I have is what comes next in this progression from cascading effects(1), to encoded responses(2), to computation(3). What is, or would be, number (4) in this sequence?

I've spelled it out in depth and detail. To recap: physics is based on a useful abstraction, which has yielded enormous physical powers, but at the expense of excluding fundamental aspects of human existence.

Quite, a world of philosophical zombies could have played the role acted out by humanity. And yet a cockroach and a crocodile have more self awareness, or sentience, than a philosophical zombie.

I don’t have the answers to any of this, but I remain a kind of doubting Thomas. I find it difficult to see why meaning must be grounded in necessity or guaranteed by something absolute. Could it be that humans are unrealistically impressed by reason, treating it as the highest or even only valid form of understanding? But reason is just one tool among many, and has limited use. It struggles with emotions, ambiguity, and subjective experiences. It's clear that no logical argument can fully capture grief, happiness, aesthetic appreciation, or empathy. I wonder if we overestimate its power, forgetting that perhaps it evolved for survival, not for solving metaphysical puzzles or guaranteeing truth.

I enjoyed reading this post, it laid out some of my thinking in a clear way. I agree about the limitations of human thought. For me meaning, or guaranteed by something absolute etc are not important. Likewise my, or our ability to understand these different questions about our lives. Rather, I am concerned with way, of life, way of living and philosophy and mysticism enables this to be refined. Also that there is an opportunity that the mind can be opened to the complexities in nature and our historical heritage of philosophy and mysticism. Which can be brought into the present of life. So as to develop a wisdom in the present. Also an openness to any divine or teleological possibility, action, or grounding.