Certainly wouldn't. How do you think the lucky guy would feel 'hey we've brought you back to life, but all your relatives died a million years ago. Let us know if you need anything.' — Wayfarer

For human or near-human animals it would be unethical, but not necessarily for others. Maybe we can use the technology to bring back the animals and plants we are driving to extinction right now.

What would there to be gained by decoding it? Aren't we already embodiments of it? Doesn't 'what we are' exemplify 'what it means'? — Wayfarer

They have determined from looking at DNA that homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans. They can also trace human migrations across the world from Africa starting about 100,000 years ago. Looking at DNA similarities and differences can show who is related to whom and how long ago the populations split off. The same can be done for species, human and non-human, with much greater time spans since their most recent common ancestor. There is a huge amount of information available and they've only been working on it for about the past 20 years.

I love the way they can correlate archeological, linguistic, and genetic information about humans to give our pre-historic history, if you will. On a broader scale, they can use geology, paleontology, comparative biology, and genetics to do the same for non-human species. Linnaeus organized and classified biological organisms based on common structural features. Then paleontology came along and allowed that classification to be extended to extinct organisms. Then Darwin came along and provided a rationale for what Linnaeus had found. Then genetics and microbiology came along and added another layer of detail and connection.

No, I do not know that. — Athena

This is something Wayfarer wrote in a thread about a year ago:

This idea is not dissimilar to one in many of Alan Watt's books. For example The Book: on the Taboo against Knowing who you Are, which 'delves into the cause and cure of the illusion that the self is a separate ego. Modernizes and restates the ancient Hindu philosophy of Vedanta and brings out the full force of realizing that the self is in fact the root and ground of the universe.' Watts does bring an element of the 'divine play', the game that Brahman plays by manifesting as the multiplicity, each part of which then 'forgets' its relation to the whole. Which actually dovetails nicely with some elements of Platonism, i.e. the 'unforgetting' (anamnesis) of the state of omniscience that obtained prior to 'falling' in to carnal existence. Note well however the mention of 'taboo' in the title. — Wayfarer

Sorry, Wayfarer, I keep referring to this post. It's just that you explained it much better than I tried to.

This is a summary from Wikipedia of Carl Jung's ideas about the collective unconscious:

Collective unconscious (German: kollektives Unbewusstes) refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts, as well as by archetypes: ancient primal symbols such as The Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, and the Tree of Life.[1] Jung considered the collective unconscious to underpin and surround the unconscious mind, distinguishing it from the personal unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis. He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helps to explain why similar themes occur in mythologies around the world. He argued that the collective unconscious had a profound influence on the lives of individuals, who lived out its symbols and clothed them in meaning through their experiences. The psychotherapeutic practice of analytical psychology revolves around examining the patient's relationship to the collective unconscious. — Wikipedia

But it's easy to think of the ancient Greek getting an idea and thinking it is a God speaking to him. — jgill

I didn't reject his idea out of hand, although it certainly sounds outlandish. I just don't see how he justifies the idea. Have you read the book? As I noted, it has some interesting stuff in it. But the main idea seems farfetched.

He was more of a thrill-seeker than an intellectual. — chiknsld

God. Such baloney. He wrote a book "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits," based on 40 years of study in his back yard.

I don't have much to offer here except a recommendation that you take a look at a book by Julien Jaynes - "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." An odd, odd book whose major premise I have a hard time swallowing. But Jaynes has some great things to say about consciousness and metaphor before he gets into his main subject. I suggest you take a look. Here's a link to a PDF version. Look at Chapter 2.

https://nextexx.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/julian_jaynes_the_origin_of_consciousness.pdf

Just a taste:

We are trying to understand consciousness, but what are we really trying to do when we try to understand anything? Like children trying to describe nonsense objects, so in trying to understand a thing we are trying to find a metaphor for that thing. Not just any metaphor, but one with something more familiar and easy to our attention. Understanding a thing is to arrive at a metaphor for that thing by substituting something more familiar to us. And the feeling of familiarity is the feeling of understanding.

Like what if our understanding of individuality is wrong? What if we are each are points of consciousness of the same universe? — Athena

As I'm sure you know, that idea has a long history.

So how is your brother doing? — Bitter Crank

He is doing well.

Self knowledge is good and useful. — Bitter Crank

My older brother started taking an anti-depressant. He found himself thinking more and more about how he had behaved all his life and how much he hurt people. It made him miserable. His solution? Stop taking the anti-depressant. That seemed like a pretty good solution to me.

Freud developed his system of psychoanalysis in the 1890s. He deserves credit, but psychoanalysis would have benefitted from more science and less philosophy. — Bitter Crank

I've never thought of psychoanalysis as scientific. I think it's more of a meditative practice. It's about awareness, not facts. Clearly Freud considered it science.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. — Wittgenstein

Been there. Done that.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2152/philosophy-joke-of-the-day/p1

The Prairie Home Companion Joke — Bitter Crank

They brought in Paula Poundstone and Roy Blount Jr. to help out the regular guys. They were wonderful. One joke after another non-stop. I had stopped listening to PHC after a while when it became too strident, but I still tried to listen in for the joke shows.

For me, humor is just a consequence of the working of our minds. Evolution gave us minds that could manipulate abstract ideas and stand as observers of ourselves and others. Humor is just one way that expresses itself. I can't see that it has any special value of its own, except maybe as a way of bringing people together.

Maybe humor is like consciousness and arose from the same source. Now you've given us the Hard Problem of Humor.

I like the Sumerian story that we are special to the earth because we were created by a goddess to help the river stay in its banks, so it does not flood and kill plants. I believe others also saw it as our purpose to take good care of the earth. We have the ability to create Eden but I don't think Eden looks like New York city.

Or there is Chardin's notion that God is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man. We have a pool of consciousness that has grown a lot since the beginning of man. That consciousness is not physical yet it strongly affects our lives. — Athena

I like those kinds of stories too. I don't see them as in conflict with the ideas I expressed. Well, maybe they are or seem to be, but the sign of a philosopher the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at one time.

And it is quite true that science has a bad habit of viewing humanity as merely some insignificant material accident - a meaningless blip in a vast cosmos — apokrisis

I am human and I am a humanist, by which I mean we created human value and meaning. That's a good thing. I love humanity. I feel a connection with my fellow humans. But meaning doesn't mean anything outside of a human context. As I see it, the only way there could be meaning beyond a human scale would be if there is a God. I am not a theist.

No lump of matter in the known universe is more complexly structured that the nervous system of the average human. — apokrisis

There is a lot of the universe we don't know. If there is life elsewhere, and I would put my money on "yes," I can't see any reason it might not also rise to that level.

But science can see both how humans are completely insignificant and also completely special - and why these two things are not incompatible but just two slants on the one, four causes and Aristotelean, story. — apokrisis

I think only human value has anything to say about how humans are insignificant or special.

evolution has made man once again the center of the universe, not spatially, not metaphysically, but in Teilhard’s word, “structurally.”

“Man is the hub of the universe,” “the structural key to the universe.

This is from your Merton quote. It seems so self-important I have a hard time knowing what to say. We are not important to anything but ourselves, and that's enough. That's the way it should be.

Although Wayfarer accuses me of it, I am not a reductionist. I don't think your and my vision life is all that different. But still...

It's philosophical terminology for 'being of a fundamentally different kind'. — Wayfarer

I know what the word means, but I don't see how it applies here. The differences we are talking about here are not metaphysical. They are downhome, everyday, and physical. Also scientific. Every living thing is made up of chemical elements. The same chemical elements that make up non-living materials. Every interaction between those elements in living organisms take place in accordance with the same chemical and physical laws as they do for non-living materials.

Of course living organisms are different from non-living matter, but that difference is organizational, not material.

which is what you said. — Wayfarer

It is not what I said.

So it is said, but that, in turn, depended on a causal chain that goes back first to the way that stars produce heavy elements, and before that to the way that the Universe produces stars. But I'm dubious of the idea life just spontaneously generates and evolves really constitutes any kind of theory. — Wayfarer

Now there's a clear difference between what you believe and what I do. If I understand you correctly, you are dubious that life is created by the self-organization of non-living matter. I think it probably was, but I'm not ready to have a more detailed discussion about that. I need to do a lot of homework first.

I'm aware of some books on the physical possibility of life spontaneously self-generating, but the question I always have is, why is it felt that this constitutes an explanation? Or rather, what kind of explanation does it provide? — Wayfarer

It isn't an explanation by itself. Specific self-organizational processes will have to be determined before the explanation is adequate. No one said the process is well understood.

They exhibit self-organisation, homeostasis, the ability to reproduce, evolve and mutate, and heal from injury. — Wayfarer

In my understanding, as limited as that is in this case, non-living matter self-organizing is what lead to the beginning of life.

But it's not. Or rather, they are included, but there are other levels of organisation which are not apparent on the level of physics and chemistry. You're preaching reductionism, whereas I'm saying there's a (warning: philosophical terminology) ontological distinction in play. — Wayfarer

As I said, I think your language is ambiguous. You say there is an "ontological distinction." I'm not sure what that means. Is there an ontological distinction between water and ice? Between individual cells and the liver or brain? Between country music and rock and roll? Between potatoes and amoeba. Living things are different from non-living things, but we're all in the same family.

I'm strongly anti-reductionist and I think I've shown that in what I've written on the forum over the years.

And you're looking at the entire discussion through the spectacles of an engineer. — Wayfarer

First, I admit that was gratuitous rhetoric. There's truth in what I wrote, but I used it mostly because I thought it was clever.

And no, I'm looking at this discussion, and all other discussions, through the spectacles of T Clark. It's because I look at things this way that I am an engineer, not the other way around.

You know this is a politically explosive issue right? — Athena

I made a statement of fact about what Darwin wrote in "Origin of Species." Any political interpretation is yours.

the inheritance of acquired characteristics has had a wild roller coaster ride over the past two centuries. — Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Quanta Magazine

When I read "Origin of Species," I was surprised to see that Darwin included inheritance of acquired characteristics as a potential mechanism for evolution in addition to natural selection.

the ultimate reality is not something seen, but rather the ever-present Seer.

Have you thought about how this ties in with Taoism and other eastern philosophies. The ultimate reality in Taoism, the Tao, is not human or conscious. In a sense, consciousness creates our world, the multiplicity, from unspeakable oneness. This view seems contradictory to the one you describe.

the The Third Way. — Wayfarer

Interesting website. Thanks.

There's nothing about chemical and physical laws which in itself will give rise to living organisms. — Wayfarer

This is an ambiguous way of saying it. Life is completely consistent with chemical and physical laws. If you look closely, you won't find any molecules acting in ways that don't follow those laws. On the other hand, one couldn't predict that life would arise or what it would look like from those same laws. This is what strong emergence is about. Reductionism but not constructivism.

living organisms are fundamentally different to inanimate matter — Wayfarer

Ok. And organic chemistry is fundamentally different from physics. Neurology is fundamentally different from mind. Again, that's emergence.

there's memory, and there's intentionality, even if its rudimentary in the very simplest forms. — Wayfarer

@apokrisis and I just had this discussion in a different thread. He said something similar. I rejected the term "intentionality" in this context. As I wrote in one of those posts, you are palling around with Thomas Merton and his hippie noosphere cohort.

I guess what I’m wondering is if there’s a word or phrase that denotes the difference between the working definition someone uses in daily life and the formal definition they’d give if asked, — Brad Thompson

Babies learn language long before they learn to read. People don't give children definitions, they talk to them, tell them things, ask them questions. Babies and little kids build their worlds at the same time they build their language. Their, our, minds are built that way. People learn the meaning of language by using it. Meaning is usage.

Definitions come much later. People don't need to know what hamburgers are, what to call their dogs. We only need definitions so we can know what "onomatopoeia" and "dorsal fin" mean.

Elan vital, if memory serves, is about a so-called life principle that is infused into the physical (chemical soup?) for life to exist. Not a bad hypothesis if you ask me as the genesis of life hasn't yet been put on a firm physical foundation. Until such a time as that's done, we're free to speculate as much as we wish, oui? — Agent Smith

Non. On ne peut pas spéculer sans comprendre.

We know enough about how life began to understand that there's nothing magic about it. No elan vital. All the materials are standard stuff - carbon, hydrogen, iron, water, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, etc. They're all put together by chemical processes that follow the rules of organic chemistry. Of course there's more to it than that, but it's clear it's one of those things science is good at figuring out and will.

The only difference is that when I read them again decades later, the ideas didn't have anything like the same impact, — jamalrob

I think the idea of psychohistory opened up my mind to what science could be. It was the scope of the books. The power of the technology. I can still remember that feeling.

I think it makes sense, given that science fiction, including cyberpunk, is primarily about ideas. — jamalrob

I agree. When I was in my teens, I read the first three books of the seven book "Foundation" trilogy. I was blown away. I can still feel the intellectual impact those ideas had on me. I went back and reread "Foundation" about five years ago after I gave it to my son for Christmas. It kind of stinks from a purely literary point of view. Asimov wasn't all that great as a writer, but the ideas still work.

Keeping in mind that he was writing about efficient cause and not the broader Aristotelian concept, here is what R.G. Collingwood wrote about causality in “An Essay on Metaphysics.”

That the term cause', as actually used in modern English and other languages, is ambiguous. It has three senses; possibly more; but at any rate three.

Sense I. Here that which is ‘caused' is the free and deliberate act of a conscious and responsible agent, and 'causing' him to do it means affording him a motive for doing it.

Sense II. Here that which is 'caused' is an event in nature, and its 'cause' is an event or state of things by producing or preventing which we can produce or prevent that whose cause it is said to be...Sense II-refers to a type of case in which natural events are considered from a human point of view, as events grouped in pairs where one member in each pair, C, is immediately under human control whereas the other, E, is not immediately under human control but can be indirectly controlled by man because of the relation in which it stands to C. This is the sense which the word 'cause' has in the practical sciences of nature, fi.e. the sciences of nature whose primary aim is not to achieve theoretical knowledge about nature but to enable man to enlarge his control of nature. This is the sense in which the word 'cause' is used, for example, in engineering or medicine...

Sense III. Here that which is 'caused' is an event or state of things, and its 'cause' is another event or state of things standing to it in a one-one relation of causal priority: i.e. a relation of such a kind that (a) if the cause happens or exists the effect also must happen or exist, even if no further conditions are fulfilled, (b) the effect cannot happen or exist unless the cause happens or exists, (c) in some sense which remains to be defined, the cause is prior to the effect; for without such priority there would be no telling which is which...Sense III refers to a type of case in which an attempt is made to consider natural events not practically, as things to be produced or prevented by human agency, but theoretically, as things that happen independently of human will but not independently of each other: causation being the name by which this dependence is designated. This is the sense which the word has traditionally borne in physics and chemistry and, in general, the theoretical sciences of nature... — R.G. Collingwood

When I first read this, I found it unsatisfying and confusing. As I’ve thought about it, I’ve come to think that the distinction between the first two senses he writes about and the third is worth considering. In the first two, the agent of causality is a human actor. In the third, it is another event. According to Collingwood, the first two senses are the original meaning of “cause,” while the third is a cause metaphorically by comparison to the first two. After thinking about it, that makes some sense to me. Perhaps the question I'm asking is whether that metaphorical understanding makes sense.

Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things.

The elan vatal talked about by vitalists is not generally considered the same as soul as understood by Christians and some other religions, although there are some who make that connection.

What do you think Darwin would have to say about people living in the 21st century and still believing in a "soul"? Is it possible that Aristotle was right, and that Darwin was wrong? — chiknsld

Darwin was pretty clear that he didn't know how life began. Natural selection only applies to already living organisms.

Although differences between believers in a soul and those who believe life is a physical process exist, seems to me that setting that up as a conflict between Darwin and Aristotle is misleading. There are plenty of people who believe in both Darwinian evolution and the existence of the soul.

And so, asking the predicate of existence, and the answer being "something was always here" is in a sense merely a begging of the question, and at the very least an infinite regression. — chiknsld

If, in fact, it is true that the universe is eternal, then it is neither begging the question nor an infinite regress. It doesn't make sense to ask a question then exclude a possible answer.

I would love to hear everyone's feedback on this observation. Does this make sense? — Bret Bernhoft

For me, the major themes I've always gotten from cyberpunk are nihilism and despair. For that reason, I tend to avoid them. The only books in that genre I've enjoyed in the last few years are those by Paolo Bacigalupi, especially "The Windup Girl."

something was always here — chiknsld

That's where I put my vote, based on not much of anything. It's not begging the question at all, it's saying the question is meaningless.

Just look around here! Words are tools is all I'm noting. There is no "one" definition that is used the same everywhere. — Philosophim

Words are the tools we have to work with. It's our job as proto-philosophers to do our jobs with the tools at hand.

If you find the word too broad, which is a fair assessment, then I would work on defining sub-groups of causality that are more detailed and to your satisfaction. — Philosophim

That's what this thread has been about.

Reality persists despite whatever definition and words we invent. — Philosophim

Well.... that's for another thread.

So at each turn, you want to reduce causality to some kind of ultimate simple - a monism. — apokrisis

Guilty as charged.

But just because efficient causality is a quarter of the whole, that doesn't make it wrong. It just makes it incomplete. And it also makes life simpler to the degree you can get away using that as your sole modelling tool. — apokrisis

My problem; and I guess it's more a matter of taste, aesthetics, than substance; is that those broader issues are not what I would call causes. No need to go into this any further. I think I've understood what you've been saying and I don't disagree.

A constraint doesn’t determine an outcome, it just limits the probabilities. It places concrete bounds on the degrees of freedom or sources of indeterminism.

Of course, in the extreme, constraints become mechanical - that is, they can leave so little wiggle-room that the outcome is as good as determined. — apokrisis

This just reinforces my understanding that you and I mean different things when we say "causality." That's not a bad thing and I've found your positions interesting. If I understand you correctly, you think I've focused in on a small part of what's included and not taken a holistic view. That's because my whole beef is with the way causality is usually understood, not the broader context you are describing.

One thing that might help is that words are entirely made up. — Philosophim

That's not true. They aren't just made up, they're made up and then agreed to. Imperfectly. That's what this thread is about for me. Getting to an agreement on what cause is or, if that fails, laying out the terms of the argument.

No word is an immutable aspect of reality, — Philosophim

There's a whole discipline in metaphysics about that. If you throw out the words, you throw out ontology. I'm just trying to get rid of causality. You're trying to get rid of reality.

But there is something you're trying to find that bothers you about it. — Philosophim

You ignored my previous response in which I discussed this.

If you don't want to give my former post a read, give that latter one a read at least. — Philosophim

If I remember correctly, I participated in both those threads.

How can we address that until after we find the answer to the titular question? — Banno

If they're the same thing, then it's the same question.

I think I mentioned this before, but I don't remember anyone responding.

How is causality different from determinism? They seem like the same thing to me, just looked out from a different direction. Can you have one without the other?

T Clark, from reading your replies in this thread, I suppose I still don't understand why in particular you seem to have an issue with causality. — Philosophim

I don't know if you've noticed, but I spend a lot of time thinking about metaphysics. My cliched catchphrase - Metaphysical claims, what Collingwood calls "absolute presuppositions," are not true or false. They have no truth value. They are more or less useful. What leaves a bad taste in my mouth is when people fail to recognize their presuppositions are not somehow immutable aspects of reality.

Causality is metaphysics. The question I have is whether or not it is useful metaphysics. My intuition says "no," but I don't yet have good arguments to show that to my satisfaction. That's what this thread is about.

Another thing that raises my hackles is when people say that a certain position is obvious or self-evident. That's rarely, maybe never, true, but it shuts down argument. I was recently in a discussion like that about cause in another thread.

Maxim: All essential workers (healthcare, cleaners, garbage collectors) will be given a minimum wage to protect them from exploitation.

Using the universal law, what are your thoughts to debunk this argument? — ohmyvanz

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

— Immanuel Kant,

So, what is the universal law you want to apply? Some choices:

• All workers should be given a minimum wage.
• All workers should be protected from exploitation.
• Everyone should be protected from exploitation.
• Everyone should be given a minimum income.
• Wage structure should be used to ensure society is provided with adequate essential services.
• Financial reward should be used to encourage desired behavior.
• Workers should be paid on the basis of the importance of the work they do.