But, is this appreciation really rare? — oysteroid

I cannot speak to how rare it is , but it is highly unusual. Observation and appreciation of real nature has for the most part been replaced by electronics, to the extent that rather than being at one with nature, people are at one with computers and are quite literally in love with them. They are trying to actually emulate robots. Technology has become without exaggeration the real reality.

But be that as it may, and we all can choose our own path of exploration, I like you explore the arts because I am really interested in understanding life.

No, we don't need the 100,000 meaningless words, just the three words "It just happens". That's pretty much all of Evolutionary Theory. The rest is obfuscation. I think Peirce's calls it tychism, but he had only one, since Mind emerged from the first. Materialists, who can't stand that word (don't worry, I won't repeat it knowing the sensibilities of Materialists), have to resort to an infinite number of "It just happens". Unfortunately, for materialists, this doesn't count for a theory. It is only the Miracle of all Miracles. Even God would blush at this story.

Oh, sorry, I thought you had something new to add, other than It Just Happens. I guess the OP has a point. Nice OP.

No, the OP is about the miracle of aimless, infinite, possibilities. It's actually quite a good OP that almost anyone who has contemplated evolution most ultimately come to ask, how the heck does it all hold together. Biologically, we are speaking about my morphogenesis. Now, if you have evidence of how evolution explains morphogenesis, well the OP is there, go ahead and answer the question being posed.

As the OP success, those who believe in evolutionary theory simply believe in an universe of infinite possibilities that Just Happens like this and continues to miraculously Just Happen. Evolution is much less a theory (there is no way to replicate it falsify it), than a good mythological story.

None, since it directly contradicts GR. It's a theory with no home.

No, it's absurd to most people, but you don't bite the hand that feeds you. So the Emperor With No Clothes continues to enjoy the parade.

The OP merely highlights the obvious. Exactly how many miracles are permitted per faith. Materialists apparently feel they are entitled to an infinity. Most religions are content with a handful.

The essential feature of experienced time is simply change. — oysteroid

Agreed. More specifically I would say change in memory. This becomes important as one constructs an ontology of perception.

Consider how you can represent any quantity spatially, or with sound, or with color, or whatever else might come to mind. — oysteroid

Emotions, intensity of a feeling.

Probably, what space actually is objectively isn't even captured by our experience of it. — oysteroid

If one stares at space, maybe as an artist, space appears to take on a new experience. Artists, such as the impressionists, or maybe Da Vinci saw in space what most cannot, because the skills have not been developed.

The mind, creative intelligence, is it. Peirce was correct except for that bit about tychism. Mind evolves and as it evolves it creates things from what it learns. It even, out of sheer boredom, creates stories that it magically popped out of chemicals. Well not entirely out of boredom, it figured out it can make lots of money from such a story.

My view of life is that it is exactly as sit appears. The reason I can be so matter of fact is that I am not part of huge chemical/machinery industrial complex that requires everything to be chemicals. I don't make a living evangelizing stories. In other words I am not laden with biases.

Darn good post. I have to read it more closely and will be back if I have any comments.

Listen, it's your story. You just don't seem to know how to keep it straight. Don't look for me for help.

I said I find it likely that mind emerges out of matter. — Gooseone

This is specifically your faith. One can equally say, I find it likely that God created the universe. There is no difference other than the belief of one is different than the belief of the other. Problems only arise when materialists claim that science is on their side. That science says we are just chemicals. Using science as a shield for a faith.

We kind of know that another mind just happened due to the growth of a nervous system, don't we — apokrisis

Is this the new story that the mind pops out of the nervous system? It keeps changing. I thought it was the child of Cosmic Goals and Thermodynamic Purpose, couple with an Infinite Possibilities.

I love stories as much as the next person, but even the Greeks kept their mythology pretty much straight.

Yes, but on what do you base the idea that direct experience cannot be illusory? — Agustino

It is my experience, it is not illusory. If someone says that it is illusory, then we need to inspect the differences in our experiences. Differences in experience is real, it is not illusory.

feel the need to invoke some sort of elan vital to make it happen — Gooseone

No, but you do need to invoke some faith that "mind just happened", because that is all there is. Faith comes in many forms and when it is part of one's belief system, it simply has to be acknowledged.

Those who place mind (or Elan vital) as primary, do not need to invoke such faith, because mind was always there and still is here exactly as we experience it.

Not necessarily, all that it would mean is that direct experience would not be sufficient to confirm what is illusory and what is not. — Agustino

Once an individual allows illusions to become explanations then magic becomes real. Anything and everything can be explained as an illusion. There are no limits and we can't pick and choose. I seek the explanation.

Here is an interesting essay written by an astrophysicist who directly addresses the issues at hand:

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/03/26/521478684/mind-matter-and-materialism

"The trouble comes when materialists claim the reduction of consciousness to matter is "what science says." Nobody needs me to point out that the relationship between mind and matter (i.e. mind and brain) remains a cutting edge and contentious topic in philosophy and science. That means you can't just state that mind is purely a biological phenomena as if it were a scientific fact. In fact, that statement is a really a metaphysical stance. It's an assumption. It's the beginning of the argument, not the end."

"So, in the end, it's all about being upfront about our metaphysical biases and their limits. As philosopher Roberto Unger and physicist Lee Smolin put it, our job in thinking about the world is to "distinguish what science has actually found out about the world from the metaphysical commitments for which the findings of science are often mistaken."

Metaphysical commitments are fine. We all have them. But when it comes to quantum physics and what it tell us about matter and materialism, we must work hard to distinguish what's solid ground and what is swamp."

It could be that time as experienced is illusory, Einstein certainly thought so for example. — Agustino

This is why ignore GR and Einstein. Ontology becomes deeply derailed into an experienced of illusion. From this point, everything, including this thread becomes totally pointless. Anything and everything becomes an illusion.

In the meantime, why do you think the direct observation of life yields knowledge of ontology? What if the direct observation of life is illusory, and hence yields knowledge of an illusion, not really of the way things are? — Agustino

I take this approach for the same reason the Daoist did, it yields concrete, practical results that I can truly understand and believe in, because I actually experience it. I understand the healing intelligence of the mind/body because I experience it. I am a very practical person who is experimenting and exploring in every day life and gaining knowledge of life in the process.

No, he's simply pointing out the absurdity of evolution without intention. Evolution simply says one miracle is simply followed by an infinite number of subsequent miracles. That is Faith in the Infinite. He is not the first. Lee Smolin said similar when discussing the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM. The Belief in the Infinite (God).

Good post Mike. You are in good company.

But physicalists, like yourself, seem to have a deep fear of God, and will posit any of a vast number of irrational principles in order to avoid what is logically necessary. — Metaphysician Undercover

In this case, the vast Infinite along with Thermodynamic Purpose and Cosmic Goals have been called upon as the new God. It's a reengineering of the oldest mythology. Somehow, someway, intent and purpose had to be introduced into any Genesis story.

I see no issue to call such a previous state unintelligible / vague, — Gooseone

It's fine to say "I don't have the foggiest idea", but that is not what is happening here. What is being suggested is that out of nothingness matter magically sprung (the Big Bang), and out of matter Mind magically sprung. That is not vagueness. That is a a pretty definite mythology born out of a specific goal to obliterate the notion of Mind.

Peirce wove a different story from vagueness. For him, first came tychism (chance), then came Mind, and then came Matter. From Vagueness anything can spring since we are just manipulating words into sentences and sentences into stories, depending upon the biases of the story teller.

And the Daoist story was first there was Mind.

What is happening is storytelling is replacing evidence in science. Metaphysics is something else. And if someone takes the metaphysical stance that Mind burst out of Matter born out of a surrounding universe of Constraints, Purpose and Goals, well that's OK. It's just another transposition of the external story of God who provides Purpose and Constraints. It is nothing new. Scientism is just another religion masked with a new set of words and dogma.

Why? You have not sketched out yet why this primacy of philosophical time over scientific time. — Agustino

If one is interested in understanding measurements, then scientific time is primary. Einstein was interested in the issue of simultaneity. If one is interested in exploring the nature of life (ontology) then time as experienced becomes primary.

As for GR, as a matter of measuring, both twins can view themselves as accelerating away from the other as they take measurements. The twin on Earth can view himself as accelerating away from the rocket.

Here is an interview with Lee Smolin. In it, he discusses the many problems of time when approaching it from QM and GR. He then goes on to suggest that possibly science had it all wrong and time had primacy over matter (time in this case can be viewed as Bergsin's duration) and the implications on all of science in this were so, e.g. that laws evolve over time. I can't sort out the scientific mess. I can only proceed with direct observation of life and develop a metaphysical ontology based upon these observations.

https://www.edge.org/conversation/lee_smolin-think-about-nature

The equations are not an ontology. If you want to use the equations as an ontology they only totally different views of time. In fact, time vanishes in GR.

I think we can stop at this point. The OP is about philosophical vs scientific time. There are thousands upon thousands of ideas about the ontological implications it lack thereof of GR (let's forget about SR) and no reason to throw yet more into this very mixed up bundle. It doesn't even jive with QM so why even consider it until it is straightened out.

So you get what is being said now? The regularity that we call mind is also an emergent product of (semiotic) growth, like the regularity we call nature. — apokrisis

Sure, there is Mind. It evolves as a product of growth (learning). And then it leaves behind dead matter. Bergson said the same. Good ole Mind. Right there evolving. I'm sure you would have preferred Matter, but unfortunately it is Mind, in the title and in the paragraph. No way to erase it.

Peirce avoided magic by stating the obvious.

But you've got a problem, Rich, if you don't understand what you read. — apokrisis

Nope, you have a problem. For heaven sake's the title of the essay is "The Law of the Mind". He explicitly refers to mind (the word physicalists bite their tongue on) and then goes on to refer to matter as dead mind. This puts mind as primary. Then the final nail in the coffin is his reference to Schelling, fully embracing his idealism. He never comes close to saying that all is physical and mind magically emerges from matter. He had too much intellectual honesty for that.

I think we may have a bit of revisionism going on here. The quote is directly from Peirce's Law of the Mind which is probably a better source than your incredibly biased interpretation.

F=MA — noAxioms

That's Newton, which at the end may be closer to nature than Relativity.

But apokrisis' position goes a lot further than "it just happened", with the assumption of apeiron and infinite potential. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agree. There is all kinds of whipsawing going on. First we have something resembling Pierce's global mind as you describe and then we we have the denial of all such. At least Peirce was consistent, as apparently was Schelling. If one wants a reasonably consistent view, at least Peiece presents one, though it all begins with chance then mind then matter. Daoism would say it begins with Mind and just forget about the chance.

It should also be noted that Whitehead also had to include his version of God in his process philosophy. There is no getting away from it no matter how much effort is put into hiding it.

But Peirce was arguing for a "total emergence" naturalism. So in the beginning, there is neither matter nor mind in any useful concrete sense. Everything that comes to exist arises because of sign relations. — apokrisis

Always better to go to the source:

Peirce, Law of the Mind

"I have begun by showing that tychism must give birth to an evolu-
tionary cosmology, in which all the regularities of nature and of
mind are regarded as products of growth, and to a Schelling-fashioned
idealism which holds matter to be mere specialised and partially
deadened mind."

As for Schelling:

"In the System of Transcendental Idealism Schelling goes back to Fichtean terminology, though he will soon abandon most of it. He endeavours to explain the emergence of the thinking subject from nature in terms of an ‘absolute I’ coming retrospectively to know itself in a ‘history of self-consciousness’ that forms the material of the system. The System recounts the history of which the transcendental subject is the result. A version of the model Schelling establishes will be adopted by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Mind. Schelling presents the process in terms of the initially undivided I splitting itself in order to articulate itself in the syntheses, the ‘products’, which constitute the world of knowable nature. The founding stages of this process, which bring the world of material nature into being, are ‘unconscious’."

For those interested in Eastern Philosophies, this is very close to Daoism.

In speaking of time, Smolin, describes a situation that echos my sentiments about immutable Laws of Nature:

"Let's consider a system that's been studied many times. We have measured before the statistical distribution of outcomes through some collection of past instances where we've measured the system before. And if we do it now and measure the system again we're going to get one of those past outcomes that we saw before. If we do it many times now we're going to get a statistical distribution, which is going to be the same distribution that we saw before. We're confident if we do it next year or in a million years or in a billion years we're going to get the same distribution as we got before. Why are we confident of that? We're confident of that because we have a kind of metaphysical belief that there are laws of nature that are outside time and those laws of nature are causing the outcome of the experiment to be what it is. And laws of nature don't change in time. They're outside of time. They act on the system now, they acted on the system in the same way in the past, they will act the same way in a year or a million or a billion years, and so they'll give the same outcome. So nature will repeat itself and experiments will be repeatable because there are timeless laws of nature.

But that's a really weird idea if you think about it because it involves the kind of mystical and metaphysical notion of something that is not physical, something that is not part of the state of the world, something that is not changeable, acting from outside the system to cause things to happen. And, when I think about it, that is kind of a remnant of religion. It is a remnant of the idea that God is outside the system acting on it."

Now he goes in the describe an alternate hypothesis about the nature of time:

"So let's try a different kind of hypothesis. What if, when you prepare the system, you transform it, and then you measure it-nature has a way of looking back and asking the question: have similar things been done in the past? And if they have, let's take one of those instances randomly and just repeat it. That is, nature forms habits. Nature looks to see is there a similar thing that happened in the past. And if there was, what if it takes that? If there are many, it picks randomly among them and presents you with that outcome.

Okay, well that will give the same statistical distribution as you saw in the past, by definition, because you're sampling from the past. So there doesn't have to be a law outside of time. The only law needs to be what I call the principle of precedence—that when you do an experiment, nature looks back and gives you what it did before."

In these two paragraphs if one substitutes mind for nature, Smolin described Bergson's mind, though he probably doesn't realize it. This process is Bergson's duration.

All this is utterly wrong. The stay-home person is not accelerating in the frame of the rocket twin. It takes force to accelerate, and no force is being applied. — noAxioms

I don't see how either twin knows this or how the clocks know this. Do they feel it? To the twin on Earth, it appears that he is accelerating away from the rocket. Where in the the equations does it identify which twin to choose? It seems rather arbitrary unless one of the twins knows our feels something, but there measurements should be neutral. Just measurements. They are looking at the same thing. But it is possible that the additional forces that are being applied and felt are having some biological effect.

It is very speculative to begin making all kinds of ontological speculations about the nature of biological and conscious evolution based upon some equations that were designed to address some measurement issues. My guess is that the physical body will actually perish under such prolonged pressure. Who knows what happens to consciousness.

From an interview of Smolin:

"Feynman once told me, "Whatever you do—you're going to have to do crazy things to think about quantum gravity—but whatever you do, think about nature."

One really needs to keep focused on the problem and not get carried away with equations, substituting symbols for conscious experience. I share this point of view.

An interesting paper in the subject:

Yet another time about time …
Part I: An Essay on the Phenomenology of Physical Time
Plamen L. Simeonov

Quite a complicated an interesting read from which I extract:

"In his book “Time Reborn” Smolin argues that physicists have inappropriately banned the
reality of time because they confuse their timeless mathematical models with reality,
(Smolin, 2013). His claim was that time is both real (which means external to him) and
fundamental, hypothesizing that the very laws of physics are not fixed, but evolve over time46.
This stance is not really a new one (cf. Wheeler, 1983; Page & Wootters, 1983). "

For example, atomic clocks are shown to slow down when flown around the Earth — Agustino

That physical things are affected by acceleration (applied force) and gravitation is observable and can felt. But this is a far cry from giving equations ontological status as an explanation for lived time. As I peruse the different literature on Relativity, which each person giving their own take, quite often contradicting each other and very rarely agreeing on what anything actually means in GR, I just perceive a mess. I don't even know why SR is even taught?

There is some strange variables in the equation which are suppose to be some kind of warped time, but whatever it is, it is not comprehensible as clock time and certainly not duration as we experience it.

So whatever measurement problems science is attempting to iron out as far as the limits of observation (light) and how light is affected by gravity, it doesn't affect the duration that we feel as an evolving creative force. To philosophers who is interested in penetrating the nature of life, it is this duration that they should be focusing on. Observe the creative energy as it presses forward and all that it is capable of doing.

That's false. According to GR, the accelerating reference frame is privileged. In an accelerating reference frame it can be distinguished who is at rest and who is accelerating. In an inertial reference frame it cannot be distinguished who is at rest or who is moving. — Agustino

What is at rest?

Anyway:

https://phys.org/news/2009-06-twin-paradox-older.html

It is possible that the actual force of acceleration is affecting the bodies but this is not taken into account by the equations. The equations include some really strange definition of time that had nothing to do with clock time as we know it. It's called curved space-time and shouldn't be confused with clock time. It's its own beast.

ill the one who travels close to the speed of light be younger than the other one upon his return? I don't care what theory you consider when answering this question, but please answer with yes or no. — Agustino

Who knows? As I said, as far as GR is concerned each can be considered accelerating relative to each other. The equations should be reciprocal. I don't know how you pick which one is accelerating. But I've called say that one feels like they are accelerating, which is an altogether different animal not taken into account by any scientific equation.

An accelerating frame of reference is privileged. Only inertial frames of reference aren't. — Agustino

The equations do not identify which twin is to be considered accelerating. Either one can be chosen since from either twin's frame of reference, it can be accelerating from the other. I looked at the equations, and it doesn't state a preference.

And would you agree that if I take a man and fly him close to the speed of light he will age slower than one that remains on Earth? — Agustino

There should be no difference since each can be considered accelerating relative to reach other as GR is considered. However, as we all know, acceleration can be felt, and therefore may be biological effects as a result of the actual real duration of acceleration. In other words, there may be real effects but independent of Relativity which assumes no privileged frame of reference.

I know you're anti-science, but what does that statement even mean??? — noAxioms

It is the what the relativity equations are all about, keeping in mind only General Relativity. Special has c no application since inertial frames don't exist anywhere.

What counts as scientific time? — Agustino

Scientific time is measurement of simultaneous events. It is not the duration of experience which is heterogeneous and continuous. It is there essence of Zeno's paradoxes. Duration is indivisible.

The only way to observe the duration of life is by closing one's eyes and directly experience it. One can also mediate, practice Tai Chi or yoga to get an even deeper understanding.

I prefer philosophers who directly scrutinize the nature of life and pay lots of attention to what they actually observe and then write about it.

Not many well-known Western philosophers actually do this. What little we have of Heraclitus' writings is worth reading (translating however are suspect). Then there is Bergson, who is the father of modern French philosophy and there is enough in his writings to last a lifetime. Stephen Robbins is the only philosopher I have found that can build on Bergson and actually add additional insights. Beyond these authors, I still hunt around looking for interesting insights from those authors who have studied Eastern thought such as Alan Watts. Really deep insights into the nature of nature are tough to find. Most translations of Buddhism and Daoism are seriously wanting, more calibrated as marketing devices as opposed to penetrating philosophy.

Recently I enjoyed Zajonc's book on the nature of light. I very much enjoyed Itzhak Bentov's take on Buddhism and life's journey.

When you assume a material first principle, as you do, then some form of active cause is necessary to bring about change. But you assume that the constraints just magically emerge out of the infinite freedom of material potential, as a symmetry-breaking. And this is completely irrational. — Metaphysician Undercover

To some, it may seem too simplistic to describe current scientific theories about the origins of the Universe and Life as "It just happened", but if one takes the time too peel away all of the manufactured words and ideas, and the fog of verbosity, "It just happened", is all that is left. To masquerade the emptiness of the explanations, words such as tychism, and other poetic and pseudo-scientific phrases as invented out of thin air. All to avoid the easily understood phrase"We don't have the foggiest idea".

But it doesn't stop there. It continues on and permeates all of neuro-biological scientific literature, that whenever something doesn't fit or make sense, science conveniently calls upon its "It just happens", explanation of the world, ignoring, marginalizing, or ostracizing any idea that doesn't fit into it's highly biased physicalist view if life. As a result, understanding the nature of the mind/body and maintenance of its health is severely impacted. This is the major practical issue.