Bear in mind that you are taking a very partial view of current evolutionary arguments. So the idea that life has the global purpose of surviving is being replaced by the idea it serves the greater purpose of entropification or dissipation. — apokrisis
To describe man as a conglomeration of transformed groceries is valid and realistic, up to a certain point. The limit of the validity of this description is set by its reductionist character. What is needed in addition is a compositionist counterpart. Man certainly consists of molecules and atoms, but he does not arise by an accidental concourse of these molecules and atoms. — Dobzhansky
Do you see much renunciation going on in the modern consumer society? — apokrisis
Rational animal, thank you. It's a qualifier that makes a fundamental diifference.
— Wayfarer
I don't think I would call that difference "fundamental". — Metaphysician Undercover
I fully accept the facts of evolution, but I believe that once h. sapiens crosses a certain threshold, she is able to see things in a way that are not simply 'biologically determined'. Such, indeed, is the meaning of the 'sapience' after which our kind is named.
~ Wayfarer
What is the point to assuming such a "threshold"? — Metaphysician Undercover
Creativity, just like metaphysics, cannot be made sense off from an evolutionary perspective because it does not necessarily increase one's chance of survival, nor does it necessarily increase propagation. However, it is an essential part of life which cannot be overlooked. — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't recognise that as 'purpose' — Wayfarer
But how could transcendent purpose be validated? Is personal revelation or religious tradition enough to talk about purpose in that universalising sense? — apokrisis
Consequently, it is naturally assumed that 'science has shown that the Universe is devoid of purpose' and that 'man is simply another evolved species'. It is what sensible people believe, nowadays. You see that in questions on this forum, practically every day. — Wayfarer
Nowadays we presume... — Wayfarer
Consciousness ends up being conscious of how it must be the product of unconscious processes. — apokrisis
You’ve affirmed that consciousness is there due to unconscious process of mind. — javra
But I have taken care to distinguish my holistic naturalism from that reductionist Scientism. So you are not dealing with purpose as a systems science perspective would understand it. — apokrisis
'life' is a specific emergent level of molecular-structured thermodynamic complexity that "happened" insofar as -- "because" -- there weren't conditions which prevented it. Same reason snowflakes "happen". In other words, the universe consists in entropy-driven transformations wherein complex phenomena like (terrestrial) "life" arises & goes extinct along a segment of the slope down from minimal entropy (order) to maximal entropy (disorder); the universe is always-already "dead" but becomes a little less-so ever-so-momentarily at different stages of its (cosmic) decomposition. — 180 Proof
So what method are you using to support that belief? — apokrisis
the beetle dry humping a beer bottle — praxis
Hoffman’s worldview is that he addresses evolution as a leading cause for how we are (something that I happen to agree with on multiple levels) yet does not give any attention to how evolutionary processes work on a strictly metaphysical level. — javra
Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed. — Thomas Nagel
In another thread i argued at length why I would instead prefer the terms attentional level and habit level processing. And one of the reasons was that that allows top-down causality to be a part of both. The difference between the two levels then becomes one of spatiotemporal scale. — apokrisis
Like you, I'm sympathetic to his case, but I'm dubiuos about appealing to evolutionary theory to justify it; seems self-defeating to me. — Wayfarer
To keep things simple: in your worldview, does consciousness hold its own top-down causal ability? — javra
That is what intelligence is for. To improve on what dumbness can achieve. — apokrisis
It might be consistent with your faith based understanding that the ultimate purpose is the Good. — apokrisis
But again, naturalism says look the world in the face and describe it as it actually is — apokrisis
There is no agent, just a process exhibiting what we choose to describe as agency. — apokrisis
Naturalism has its way of supporting belief - inductive scientific reason. You seem to be saying that a religious account would be the correct one here, not the naturalistic. So what method are you using to support that belief? Let's see why it is in fact better than methodological naturalism. — apokrisis
I watched the video and found it very interesting. It seems like what Hoffman is asserting is a simple derivation from Quantum Mechanics. — MikeL
But regardless, there are schools, methods, and ways of validating such 'first-person' understanding, that is still scientific in the sense of laying out a way of proceeding and a way of validation as you go along. That is the whole idea of a spiritual discipline. — Wayfarer
Currently, considerable interest is being taken in Peirce's ideas by researchers wholly outside the arena of academic philosophy. The interest comes from industry, business, technology, intelligence organizations, and the military; and it has resulted in the existence of a substantial number of agencies, institutes, businesses, and laboratories in which ongoing research into and development of Peircean concepts are being vigorously undertaken.
But how could transcendent purpose be validated? Is personal revelation or religious tradition enough to talk about purpose in that universalising sense? — apokrisis
I don't recognise that as 'purpose'
— Wayfarer
What could decide whether the naturalist or the transhumanist is correct here? — Apokrisis
Where evolutionary theory misleads us is with the idea that the special traits of the different species are created by the survival process. It is a fact, that the special traits which we can observe today, are the ones which have survived, but this does not lead to the conclusion that these traits were caused by survival. — Metaphysician Undercover
The traits must have been produced by the creativity of the living creatures in the first place. This creativity, which is the actual cause of variations and species is completely neglected by evolutionary theory, which dismisses it as randomness. — Metaphysician Undercover
Creativity, just like metaphysics, cannot be made sense off from an evolutionary perspective because it does not necessarily increase one's chance of survival, nor does it necessarily increase propagation. — Metaphysician Undercover
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