the conceptual difference between the mind and the brain is just too big for humans to usefully span. — Pattern-chaser
Let's try another analogy, to illustrate the point. I could accurately refer to your car as a collection of quarks. — Pattern-chaser
No you can't. — tom
I regret that the conceptual gap between your understanding and mine is too large to bridge. — Pattern-chaser
Not even to Geist? Is my memory that bad? — apokrisis
So, the vague, or the virtual, or whatever you want to call it, can be thought only in terms of everything the determinate is not, it would seem. — Janus
Geist is such a versatile, polyvalent idea; — Janus
it could be adapted to almost any metaphysic; will, will to power, elan vital, natura naturans, God, apeiron...Or it could be taken just to represent the collective spirit of humankind; the totality of zeitgeists, so to speak. — Janus
I think what you want to point to is a generalised and diffuse sense of meaningfulness and intentionality - that oceanic feeling which can come over us at the top of the mountain when all feels right about the world spread out below us. Reality as a whole has a ... spirit. Our self, with its purposes, feels less bounded, less demarcated, and becomes one with ... everything. — apokrisis
Orthogenesis, also known as orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution, evolutionary progress, or progressionism, is the biological hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction towards some goal (teleology) due to some internal mechanism or "driving force".[2][3][4] According to the theory, the largest-scale trends in evolution have an absolute goal such as increasing biological complexity. Prominent historical figures who have championed some form of evolutionary progress include Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Henri Bergson.
As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself, able to understand something of its past history and its possible future. This cosmic self-awareness is being realized in one tiny fragment of the universe — in a few of us human beings. Perhaps it has been realized elsewhere too, through the evolution of conscious living creatures on the planets of other stars. But on this our planet, it has never happened before. — Julian Huxley
A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself — Neils Bohr
Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos
I think most scientists consider themselves in the business of making testable theories. — Pseudonym
So what is it about suggesting that a thing simply exists without (for now) a determinable cause, that you think precludes it from the set of 'hypotheses' or 'metaphysical principles'. why are you placing constraints on what is allowed as a metaphysical proposition? — Pseudonym
I mean, it is an accepted dogma that evolution itself is not 'intentional' — Wayfarer
All I can do is shrug and think of all the theoretical biologists who don't accept this dogma. — apokrisis
Nagel’s surrounding argument is something of a sketch, but is entirely compatible with a Buddhist vision of reality as naturalism, including the possibility of insight into reality (under the topic of reason or cognition) and the possibility of apprehension of objective good (under the topic of value). His naturalism does this while fully conceding the explanatory power of physics, Darwinian evolution and neuroscience. Most Buddhists are what one might describe as intuitive non-materialists, but they have no way to integrate their intuition into the predominantly materialistic scientific world view. I see the value of Nagel’s philosophy in Mind and Cosmos as sketching an imaginative vision of reality that integrates the scientific world view into a larger one that includes reason, value and purpose, and simultaneously casts philosophical doubt on the completeness of the predominant materialism of the age.
Non-physical things we have discovered so far, are objects that only exist in symbolic form, such as the objects and necessary truths of mathematics.
As for the mathematical truths not yet discovered, then I am forced to conclude, by my preferred epistemology, that they already exist. — tom
Which is pretty well how I see things also. — Wayfarer
It is true that the number 1 does not directly describe something else that is physical, but directly describing something physical is not the purpose of generic thinking aids like math and logic truths. — Read Parfit
We sort of agree except I talk about sign rather than mind.
What I object to is the lingering dualism of treating consciousness as a substance, an immaterial soul-stuff or transcendent spirit. — apokrisis
there is a reason why we are not merely inventing happy fictions to pretend we exist in a reality of intelligible structure. — apokrisis
But 1 exists as the identity element. It is the name we give an actual universal symmetry. And can nature escape being a story of symmetries and their breaking? — apokrisis
We create these stories in through thinking in an attempt to make sense of these forces. — Read Parfit
The fact that metaphysical or at least philosophical conclusions are so often drawn from the purported non-intentionality of the Cosmos. — Wayfarer
the causal chain that gave rise to matter and living beings, seems intrinsic to the whole process of cosmic evolution, rather than Russell's principle of 'accidental collocation'. — Wayfarer
Aren't metaphysical conclusions drawn from the purported intentionality of the cosmos too? — Pseudonym
We create these stories in through thinking in an attempt to make sense of these forces. — Read Parfit
You had the opportunity to be true to your word, but you declined. — tom
I believe this particular ontological transformation of abstract truths requires a conscious host. — Read Parfit
What I object to is the lingering dualism of treating consciousness as a substance, an immaterial soul-stuff or transcendent spirit.
....
And that is what I see semiotics doing. It dissolves both mind and matter as species of substantial being. They both become emergent states of semiotic organisation. — apokrisis
That is the issue which apokrisis doesn't seem to understand. Apokrisis wants to reduce everything to semiotics, not apprehending the logical conclusion that this requires something (an agent) who is practising semiosis. — Metaphysician Undercover
Biosemioticians would say that only life (not conscious agency) is required for semiotic relationships to obtain. — Galuchat
I didn't refer to "conscious agency". — Metaphysician Undercover
The soul is understood to be the agent of all living things. I believe it is a mistake to associate consciousness with agency in such a way as to make agency necessarily conscious agency. Conscious agency is a type of agency, but we see agency in all living things whether they are conscious or not. — Metaphysician Undercover
Please define "agent", "agency", and "soul". — Galuchat
if we posit semiotic processes which existed prior to such evolution we need to account for that agent which is similar to mind, but not the same as mind, and is active in such semiotic processes. Classically this agent was known as the soul. — Metaphysician Undercover
An agent is something active, actual. — Metaphysician Undercover
Aristotle's definition of soul: the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it. — Metaphysician Undercover
In semiotic processes it is required that there is an agent which produces signs and an agent which interprets signs. That's why it doesn't make sense to say that both the categories, mind and matter, emerge from semiotic process. — Metaphysician Undercover
The soul is understood to be the agent of all living things. — Metaphysician Undercover
My concept of the non-physical is phenomena that cannot be detected by our senses and the scientific extensions of our senses and which cannot be explained by existing scientific paradigms. — johnpetrovic
So, an agent may be a: human being, dog, volcano, tornado, force, wave, phase transition, biochemical signal or reaction, fertilized egg (zygote), television broadcast, mechanical actuator, etc.? — Galuchat
So, in terms of modern science and Aristotle, we could say that human genetic code is the particular form (first actuality) of an individual human being. — Galuchat
So, (given your definition of agent) in the case of gene expression, human fertilization would be the agent which produces the genetic code (sign) which is accessed by the zygote (interpreter) which produces a human organism (object) which has a human body and a human mind. — Galuchat
You use soul as a metaphor for chemical reactions behind gene expression? — Read Parfit
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