Consider now how human intelligence is beginning to manipulate genetic information. This ability affords us the possibility to move into a new kind of evolution that is more efficient, and purposeful, and also signifies to me the coming of age of our species. Any species that takes control of its own evolution becomes in my view an "adult" or mature species in the universe. — punos

Can't disagree with any of that. Especially when you say that we control our own evolutionary path now. There's an argument that there is no limit from here on in. A lot of what was sci fi when I was a kid is sci fact these days. The older I get the more frustrated I feel that I won't be around to see where we go.

The main idea is that it's not just chemistry but there is another aspect apart from pure genetics and chemistry that is responsible for morphology. Genetics just produces the parts and the bio-electric activity determines how the parts organize themselves. At any level there are two aspects: stuff (atoms, cells, people), and then the forces that organizes the stuff (fundamental forces, bio-electricity, and culture respectively). If that doesn't make sense to you then just disregard it (no big deal), but i find that it gives me insight. — punos

The physics/chemistry/biology... hierarchy I described is an oversimplification. The important principle is that phenomena at one level of organization and complexity are influenced by phenomena at both lower and higher levels and are not derivable from the principles of lower levels. I don't see how the information presented in the video is relevant to that.

The older I get the more frustrated I feel that I won't be around to see where we go. — Bradskii

I feel you, i'm not afraid of death but the only reason a really want to live forever is to see it all happen before my eyes, to be a part of it through the whole ride.

That is a red light, perhaps you would say a prejudice, of mine. — T Clark

I would. :-)

I would. — Wayfarer

The bottom line of Robert Lanza's Biocentrism can be interpreted to say that the universe comes into being through the conscious experience of agents. That is why we are designated 'beings'. Time and space themselves are functions of the mind of observing agents, they have no intrinsic existence outside that. Yet we consistently and mistakenly project reality onto the so-called external world because we lack insight into the way in which the mind constructs reality.

Of all systems of philosophy which start from the object, the most consistent, and that which may be carried furthest, is simple materialism. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and ignores the relation to the subject in which alone all this really exists. It then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things, veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is. It seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemism, to polarity, to the vegetable and to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility—that is knowledge—which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality. Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result—knowledge, which it reached so laboriously, was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought matter, we really thought only the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it. — Arthur Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation

I feel you, i'm not afraid of death but the only reason a really want to live forever is to see it all happen before my eyes, to be a part of it through the whole ride. — punos

I remember asking a question a few years ago prompted by such a comment: Would you prefer to go backwards and follow your lineage right back to the very begining, or go foward to see where it goes.

Still can't make my mind up...

the universe comes into being through the conscious experience of agents. That is why we are designated 'beings'. Time and space themselves are functions of the mind of observing agents, they have no intrinsic existence outside that. Yet we consistently and mistakenly project reality onto the so-called external world because we lack insight into the way in which the mind constructs reality. — Wayfarer

As a metaphysical position, I have no problem with this. It's one I am familiar with and sympathetic towards. Lao Tzu wrote that the multiplicity of the world is brought into existence by naming. As metaphysics it is fine and useful, but as a tool to help decide how to build a bridge or when to plant my crops, it is a romantic story.

The important principle is that phenomena at one level of organization and complexity are influenced by phenomena at both lower and higher levels and are not derivable from the principles of lower levels. — T Clark

Yes i totally agree, but like i said i don't see how it precludes derivability. It simply renders it more complex and that is all. The fact that something influences another thing whether from below or from above or from within the same layer means that in principle it is derivable. What else could it possibly mean. The higher up the hierarchy the more complex the interactions because of the confluence of different forces acting from above and below and within. This causes a dynamic feedback loop among the different components in the system that is not simple to parse, but not impossible.

How many things in history have been said to be impossible (by consensus) only to be proven later not only possible but obvious.. so many things and we are still making the same type of assumptions today. If something were possible but believed to be impossible then why would anyone try? We would have never gotten to the point at which we are right now. I just don't think it's a good attitude to have, because it is self-limiting.

Would you prefer to go backwards and follow your lineage right back to the very begining, or go foward to see where it goes. — Bradskii

For me the answer is forward. The past can more easily be reconstructed than predicting the future. I want to go where we haven't been before, know what we've never known before. History is a memory but the future is an adventure.

That's a neat attempt to rehabilitate the topic, but it seems to be a god-of-the-gaps argument. The fact that the world is intelligible is the given that permits explanation. It does not follow that the fact that the world is intelligible is itself subject to explanation.

Quite the opposite, since it is difficult to see how we could explain explanation without a vicious recursion.

So again, PI §201 comes in to play such that we fall back on what we do, not what we say.

as a tool to help decide how to build a bridge or when to plant my crops, it is a romantic story. — T Clark

Nevertheless as this is a philosophy forum it is appropriate from time to time to at least consider philosophy.

As we're into video show-and-tell, here's a presentation by Robert Lanza on 'biocentrism'. I'm not sure how he is regarded in the mainstream - I suspect not highly - but I find his attitude philosophically superior to your common or garden varieties of materialism. — Wayfarer

I got to about 11 mins in and he's riffing on a variation of the '747 in a junkyard' proposal with his million monkeys typing Hamlet. And what are the odds! It could never happen! But maybe he should think about the chances that the universe randomly produced a galaxy which created a solar system with a planet a fixed distance from the sun and this planet randomly produced life and that life evolved to create humans. And what were the chances of some specific guy being born in 17th century England and writing out a play called Hamlet?

My guess is that the odds were infinitely more than the monkeys doing it. Yet that did happen. Why is he not astounded by that?

And time only exists because we exist? Bullshit. If a rock rolls down a hill then that's a change. Which is all time is. A measurement of change. It'll roll down the hill exactly the same way if the universe is completely lifeless or whether it is teeming with life. Now how we measure that change depends on us. Our perception of time depends on us. What we use to measure that change depends on us. But the existence of change - which is what time is, does not.

I want to go where we haven't been before... — punos

Boldly of course.

i don't see how it precludes derivability. — punos

This is from a well-known and influential paper by P.W. Anderson - "More is Different," written in the 1970s. The link takes you to an essay written about the paper more recently. The paper itself is appended to the back of the essay.

…the reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a constructionist" one: The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less to those of society.

The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other. That is, it seems to me that one may array the sciences roughly linearly in a hierarchy, according to the idea: The elementary entities of science X obey the laws of science Y… — P.W Anderson -

Nevertheless as this is a philosophy forum it is appropriate from time to time to at least consider philosophy. — Wayfarer

Yes, we should consider all aspects of philosophy, including it's misuse.

I have come across that paper before, i actually downloaded the PDF some time ago but i haven't had the time to read the whole thing yet. I'm a little busy right now but i will try to read it as soon as i can and give you a reply. Thank you for reminding me to read that paper, i probably would have forgotten.

And what were the chances of some specific guy being born in 17th century England and writing out a play called Hamlet? — Bradskii

The problem with your view is how much it ascribes to chance. Ultimately, you say, stuff just happens, but that is actually not an argument or an explanation.

And time only exists because we exist? — Bradskii

The existence of time requires the establishment of duration between points in time. That is what is supplied by the mind. You're neglecting or overlooking the way in which your mind is actually involved in constructing what you call 'the objective universe', by imagining it as if you can see it from no point of view whatever.

The problem with your view is how much it ascribes to chance. Ultimately, you say, stuff just happens, but that is actually not an argument or an explanation. — Wayfarer

I'm not using it as an explanation. And I'm not making an argument. It was Lanza making the argument that things with an infinitely small chance of happening won't happen. I was simply pointing out that they happen all the time. It's just that if you declare in advance how you want a random system to turn out then the chances are infinitely small that you'll be correct.

The chances of those monkeys typing 'usbn3$*: dki8$ dh' are exactly the same as typing 'My name is Ishmail'. If you wanted that first sequence of characters, then it would be as infinitely impossible as the second.

And things are not entirely random. There are physical laws that dictate the number of ways a system can evolve. Now we can argue about why those laws are there. But we shouldn't be surprised that that process of evolution (and not just from a biological viewpoint) results in changes in complexity. And guys that write Hamlet and Moby Dick.

Thank you for reminding me to read that paper, i probably would have forgotten. — punos

I have to read it again. It's been awhile.

The existence of time requires the establishment of duration between points in time. That is what is supplied by the mind. You're neglecting or overlooking the way in which your mind is actually involved in constructing what you call 'the objective universe', by imagining it as if you can see it from no point of view whatever. — Wayfarer

There's an objective universe. It exists and operates whether we are here or not. Rocks will still roll down hills at a constant rate. Galaxies and stars and planets will form. And then there's our perception of it all. Which is obviously relative. Our perception of time is an individual thing. But a clock will always tick at the same rate if we're in the same room. Take that clock to the distant moon where the rock is rolling down the hill and the time it takes will be the same whoever uses that clock to measure it. That never changes.

The chances of those monkeys typing 'usbn3$*: dki8$ dh' are exactly the same as typing 'My name is Ishmail'. — Bradskii

That's only because you've stipulated the first set of characters, so it's no longer random. Besides, what Robert Lanza said is that these experiments have actually been tried. With actual monkeys, you get no text strings at all, you get broken keyboards with monkey feces on them. If you program a random character generator to output random characters, you can calculate the odds of producing the first three words of Moby Dick by random combinations, and its astronomically remote, involving trillions of years.

There's a similar principle in biology concerning the protein hyperspace. That refers to the possible ways that amino acids can be combined, only a very small number of which will actually produce a protein. The numbers there also are astronomically minute. Likewise the so-called 'fine constants' of the Universe. So when you drill down, all of the apparently random events that give rise to living beings, have precedents that seem somehow deeply embedded in the nature of the Cosmos.

There are physical laws that dictate the number of ways a system can evolve. — Bradskii

But the entire philosophical question is about whether everything is determined by physical laws, or is not. That is the question at issue, so your response begs the question - it assumes the point at issue.

There's an objective universe. It exists and operates whether we are here or not. Rocks will still roll down hills at a constant rate. Galaxies and stars and planets will form. And then there's our perception of it all. — Bradskii

I know this may be difficult to accept, but that is also the point at issue. You're speaking from a position of naive realism (no pejorative intended, it's a textbook description) which assumes the reality of the objective world (or the sensory domain, call it what you will). But precisely that has been called into question in the history of philosophy, and certainly also by more recent cognitive science and the philosophy of physics. It doesn't mean that reality is all in your or in my mind, but that the mind - yours, mine, everyone's - provides a foundational element of what we designate as real, but which we're not aware of, because it is largely unconscious, it mainly comprises automatic (or autonomic) processes. One version of this argument is The Evolutionary Argument against Reality, by Donald Hoffman - particularly apt because it is (purportedly) based on evolutionary theory. It actually ties in with some of what Robert Lanza says (although they're very different theorists.)

That's only because you've stipulated the first set of characters, so it's no longer random. — Wayfarer

They're both randon. Monkeys are typing them. The chances of getting both sequences are identical. It's just that someone wanted those in advance. It's like people that say the universe is fine tuned for us. Well, it would be if we were the purpose of the universe.

And what were the chances of some specific guy being born in 17th century England and writing out a play called Hamlet? — Bradskii

For what it's worth, we know of one person who wrote a play called "Hamlet," but he was born in the 16th century.

For what it's worth, we know of one person who wrote a play called "Hamlet," but he was born in the 16th century. — T Clark

I was thinking of Dave Shakespeare. He wrote 'Hamlet II - The Quest For Vengence'.

One version of this argument is The Evolutionary Argument against Reality, by Donald Hoffman - particularly apt because it is (purportedly) based on evolutionary theory. It actually ties in with some of what Robert Lanza says (although they're very different theorists.) — Wayfarer

In which he says:

'Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions. Evolution shapes acceptable solutions, not optimal ones. A snake is an acceptable solution to the problem of telling me how to act in a situation. My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.'

There's a wooden Buddhah on my desk. Your mental representation of it will be exactly the same as as mine. And it has no impact on any action I am going to to make, so my senses aren't interested in adjusting my perception of it to offer a solution to the fitness consequences of it.

That certainly can happen when I see a stick in the grass and my senses shout 'snake!' I will actually believe that it's a snake. That's an evolutionary fail safe. But to extrapolate that to suggest that nothing is as we see it is truly bizarre.

But the entire philosophical question is about whether everything is determined by physical laws, or is not. That is the question at issue, so your response begs the question - it assumes the point at issue. — Wayfarer

I'm not assuming that physical laws exist. They do. And everything is determined by them. Why those laws exist as they do is an interesting question.

There's a wooden Buddhah on my desk. Your mental representation of it will be exactly the same as as mine. And it has no impact on any action I am going to to make — Bradskii

On the contrary, it might have huge impact. If you’re Buddhist, then it affects your conduct and your view of life, and if you’re not, then you might suffer for want of those same principles.

On the contrary, it might have huge impact. If you’re Buddhist, then it affects your conduct and your view of life, and if you’re not, then you might suffer for want of those same principles. — Wayfarer

It has nothing to do with my evolutionary prospects. Just as the ceramic frog and the drinks coaster also on the desk have nothing to do with them either. Not everything is evolutionary consequential. My senses aren't adjusting my perception of a wooden coaster to increase my chances of passing on my genetic information. Let's get real here.

If you can't understand when an argument is refuted discussion is pointless.