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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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The relationship between consciousness and the universe and our ability to comprehend the structure that produced us is a fascinating thing and has remarkable implications including our own importance.
Paul, you aren't alone in your a*#umptions. Many people have a hard time grasping the notion that evolution has no purpose or direction. I think that Gill was looking for this word when he said "Biblical" above.
Thinking that evolution and biology have a purpose and direction is Teleology. That was why I posted the link to Teleology in the first place. This topic is very anthro-centric. It is an important topic when discussing evolution, but I don't believe anyone has used that word here until now. I ran across it in a botany text the other day, now that I've been tossed into the paleobotany collection. I work in a giant, climate controlled room, with tens of thousands of specimens. I'm freaking surrounded by evolution. One drawer had a horse tail that was thicker than my arm, and my boss told me that the biggest horse tail was as big as a man's waist. Plant's don't preserve well, though, but spores and pollen do, and saturate the fossil record. You need a powerful microscope to look at them, though, so I mainly date samples taken from depth in oil wells, as we convert this huge collection to a digital format.
That is what you are doing. Teleology. Creationists use this philosophy all of the time. Just realize that your feelings about humans have more to do with philosophy than biological fact.
Check it out. It is a really cool wiki page, and VERY relevant to the topic at hand, humans. You MUST read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology
Again, I first ran into the topic of teleology very recently, when reading a botany textbook. It is an important thing to keep in the back of your mind when considering evolution. Here is a wiki page that discusses teleology in biology. It is a viewpoint that you must confront when considering evolution, in any way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology_in_biology
An example:
Teleological language, however, sounds as if nature (for example, an organism like a tree or insect) possesses conscious goals which it sets out to achieve. Since this is not correct, the use of teleology in biology has attracted criticism, and attempts have been made to teach students to avoid teleological language. Nevertheless, biologists still often write about evolution as if organisms had goals.
I know a guy who has this viewpoint. Where I see randomness in evolution, he replied that he thinks it is cool that we now have a species that can make microwave ovens. I think he is just waxing poetic.
Largo is the King Bee when it comes to Teleologic thinking. He acts like we are the only species of importance, ever, and that we are some sort of unique snowflake...the pinnacle of evolution, or of nature, or of some spirit. I can never figure out which.
Understanding that we are the result of random and directionless processes is hard to swallow for some people. Particularly spiritual people.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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As for the question of the infinity question regarding the Universe, I've asked Ed to weigh in. He doesn't respond to most of my posts, but I'm begging him to on this matter. If anything, to explain it in laymen terms.
Still, if the Universe is evenly limited by physical law, certain things can never happen. The mistake is assuming that anything that CAN happen, MUST happen.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Even in a finite universe their may be another Paul. I just think that it is unlikely. Paul really is like a unique snow flake, and I'm not poking fun when I say that. We all are. Humans are very complicated creatures. Far more complicated than say, molecular hydrogen in the presence of gravity.
Even on Earth, though, we see convergent processes. Take intelligence, for example. Mammals are obviously intelligent to some degree or other, but so is the Octopus, a mollusk, related more to oysters than to humans.
So there is more than one way to get to intelligence, even here on Earth.
We see convergent processes all of the time in biology. It is just evolution rolling the dice and working its invisible magic. Some adaptations work well, and different branches of the tree of life might separately arrive at the same conclusion.
Gotta run for a few days. Today is my 24th wedding anniversary. A good day.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Honestly, i appreciate your suggestion. But I've understood what a teleological interpretation is since college philosophy, that's not what I'm doing. I know what biology and science are as well. I've done what seemed like endless transects and species counts across the Sierra. The implications i'm referring to aren't about purpose or God, they are the implications of our consciousness/mind as something so remarkable as to be celebrated for what it is and not diminished as just a brief and undistinguished point in evolutionary process.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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I guess where we differ is in our opinions of our conscious minds. I view it from the standpoint of biology and evolution. You give it a higher consideration, one that I can't see from physical action.
Consider how the octopus became intelligent, and certainly conscious. There are a huge number of experiments that show the octopus learning fairly complicated mental tasks. There is no doubt that it is intelligent. So are most of the mammals. Sure, humans are smarter, but we aren't sure that whales might be smarter than humans. Whales just don't have technology.
Remember. Modern humans walked the Earth for 200,000 years until civilization appeared, and technology is VERY recent. As to our blinding technology, it wasn't evenly distributed among civilizations. Civilizations were still in lithic technology until a few hundred years ago. Some are probably still using that technology in remote areas.
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WBraun
climber
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Civilizations were still in lithic technology until a few hundred years ago
This is pure bullsh!t.
You are brainwashed to the hilt ......
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Remember. Modern humans walked the Earth for 200,000 years until civilization appeared, and technology is VERY recent. As to our blinding technology, it wasn't evenly distributed among civilizations. Civilizations were still in lithic technology until a few hundred years ago. Some are probably still using that technology in remote areas.
But this is exactly what I'm talking about. Writing's only been around for around 5000 years, but so what. The point is we got here didn't we. And that I'd say is quite an achievement. There was something that inclined us to write, something that inclined us to science, something that inclined us to the arts.... and all that makes our consciousness/minds pretty damned special I'd say. The achievements of mind in low tech societies like ancient Greece are just as remarkable. But remember, it's a romantic notion to see civilization as corrupt in its relation to nature.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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You got netflix, Paul, or amazon prime video? Check out Star Trek Voyager, Season 5, Latent Image. The Dr.'s closing remarks - starships to chicken soup - parallel yours. It is a sentiment all of us here, I think, are in agreement on, actually. But nobody says it better than the Dr in this episode! :)
Internet Magic: I just found it at imdb...
The Doctor: Causality - probability. For every action, there's an infinite number of reactions, and in each one of them, I killed her. Or did I? Too many possibilities; too many pathways for my program to follow. Impossible to choose. Still, I... I can't live with the knowledge of what I've done, I can't.
The Doctor: The primordial atom... burst, sending out its radiation, setting everything in motion. One particle collides with another, gases expand, planets contract, and before you know it, we've got starships and holodecks and chicken soup. In fact, you can't help but have starships and holodecks [and human consciousness] and chicken soup, because it was all determined twenty billion years ago!
Tuvok: There is a certain logic to your logic.
.....
Also, I don't think anyone here... including the "scientists" are downplaying the specialness of being human. I'm sure you agree it's hard to describe all of human nature - its good and bad, its splendor and tragedy - in one sentence or one paragraph. So for the insignificance of humanity see the chapter on its insignificance. For the splendor of humanity see the chapter on its splendor. In the latter, you'll get the splendor. It all depends on context in the moment, what the sentence or paragraph or chapter is emphasizing. I'm sure you would agree here.
Speaking for myself I'm pretty sure for every hour or day i've thought mostly about humanity's insignificance there's another at another time where I've thought mostly about its greatness. I bet this applies to the others here also, scientist or not.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Here's a good one...
...
"Why are so many young men dropping out of work & marriage? Maybe: Fake war and fake love are getting really good."
Jonathan Haidt
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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^^^i liked your last posr Fruitopia, however i spend most of my hours weighing good or bad,, dealing with clients waning toward this color, or that color, etc.lol. prolly not as taxing as your position tho;)
Thus, to give an explanation of something is to determine what about it is good. Its goodness is its actual cause - its purpose, telos or "reason for which" (Timaeus 27d8-29a).
Evolution might not have given any other species telos, could telos be the cause that skyrocketed us above the monkeys?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Thus, to give an explanation of something is to determine what about it is good. Its goodness is its actual cause - its purpose, telos or "reason for which" (Timaeus 27d8-29a).
This is teleology. Apparently nobody read that wiki link about it. It is a key fallacy in biology and evolution.
We are so successful as a species right now that it is easy to believe that the complete history of life was headed for this moment right now, where we control the planet. 4 billion years of evolution came to a head, and it is us, so teleology says.
I say not so, but I can guess. I would guess that intelligence such as ours was inevitable. There are so many intelligent species besides ours. I gave you the example of the smart mollusk.
Our opposable thumbs enabled our technology, but we still don't know for sure that a Humpback Whale's song is more or less beautiful than The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock. That requires a critic. Since nobody really knows what the whales are saying, we just don't know. All we know is that we have technology and whales don't.
I'm just trying to open up your minds a little. Life is vast, and sentience isn't the sole property of humans, from what I can see.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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I say not so,
how come? It's all just steps , right!?
so i'm with Fruitopia, and work'in toward the next step.
Edit: only he's moving from a positive standpoint, and i'm moving from a negative one.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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I'm just trying to open up your minds a little. Life is vast, and sentience isn't the sole property of humans, from what I can see.
Surely. but are those whales singing bout history and future?
or, just which direction to go???
when they start sending their kids to Walldorf, let me know;)
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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i read past ur link, BaseMan!
In philosophy, accidentalism denies the causal closure of physical determinism and maintains that events can succeed one another haphazardly or by chance (not in the mathematical but in the popular sense). Opponents of accidentalism maintain that what seems to be a chance occurrence is actually the result of one or more causes that remain unknown due only to a lack of investigation. Charles Sanders Peirce used the term tychism (from τύχη, chance) for theories that make chance an objective factor in the process of the Universe.[1]
In ethics the term is used, like indeterminism, to denote the theory that mental change cannot always be ascribed to previously ascertained psychological states, and that volition is not causally related to the motives involved. An example of this theory is the doctrine of the liberum arbitrium indifferentiae ("liberty of indifference"), according to which the choice of two or more alternative possibilities is affected neither by contemporaneous data of an ethical or prudential kind nor by crystallized habit (character).[1]
Seems like this is THE scientific view thesedays!?
Luck, Chance, Randomness, These are the proofs of Scientific Fact..
#QUEER!
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jstan
climber
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As I understand it, we don't know the size or the universe because galaxies about 13.5 billion light years away have increasing recessional velocities approaching the speed of light. Galaxies further away presumably also follow Hubble's law and are receding faster than the speed of light. So they are not part of the "Observable Universe." Using light we cannot see all the way back to the Big Bang because the early Universe contained a plasma. Thus the excitement over the recent detection of Gravity waves that should be transmitted through the plasma epoch.
If you view any of Lawrence Krauss' "Universe from Nothing" lectures he explains the biggest bummer of all. In a trillion years recessional velocities of all presently visible galaxies will have exceeded the speed of light and we will be able to see only the stars in our galaxy. If we wait longer even the milky way will not be visible. Space will be just a dark space empty of the matter we are used to.
Get yourself a telescope now, before it is too late to see anything.
Edit:
I assume everyone knows the sun will become a red giant and will destroy Earth about 5 billion years from now. We of course will have moved to a better neighborhood before then.
Edit:
BB: I am off my pace today. Could not hold it to 3 lines. You can get the answer to your question by watching Krauss.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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isn't Krauss merely postalizing over someone else's opinion?
IF it were true, how could earth be receptivetory of life for over 4 billion yrs?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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^^^under three lines JStan! Gotta love it?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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well, i hope you resume beyond your old pace JStan. X 10 to the power of 24 billion!
JTRee would be a sh#t-hole without ya!!!
"Grand, the environment should be, without you, misarally i afford me."
i thank god everyday for you, twice when i honk my horn at you.
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jstan
climber
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The NPS reports visitors to the park in JT are spending 63 million dollars in the area each year. This is changing the local economy. if we want people all over the world to continue coming, we the people who live there, need to value JT as much as do our visitors.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Base's reference to teleology reminds me of something the late Clean Dan Grandusky taught me in the early 1980s that I never forgot.
My eschatological perspective has evolved to the point of dis-including all macro-teleological addendums.
Sorry - its early.
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