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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 30, 2018 - 04:16pm PT
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A little bit on Lanza:
Robert Lanza (born 11 February 1956) is an American medical doctor, scientist and philosopher. He is currently Head of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine, and is Chief Scientific Officer of the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Lanza was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up south of there, in Stoughton, Mass. Lanza "altered the genetics of chickens in his basement," and came to the attention of Harvard Medical School researchers when he appeared at the university with his results. Jonas Salk, B. F. Skinner, and Christiaan Barnard mentored Lanza over the next ten years. Lanza attended the University of Pennsylvania, receiving BA and MD degrees. There, he was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and a University Scholar. Lanza was also a Fulbright Scholar. He currently resides in Clinton, Massachusetts.
A short (12 min.) primer on Lanza is on this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc44f_3QfwE
His basic ideas are presented in this short paper.
The Biocentric Universe Theory: Life Creates Time, Space, and the Cosmos Itself
Stem-cell guru Robert Lanza presents a radical new view of the universe and everything in it.
***
The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves.
This insight snapped into focus one day while one of us (Lanza) was walking through the woods. Looking up, he saw a huge golden orb web spider tethered to the overhead boughs. There the creature sat on a single thread, reaching out across its web to detect the vibrations of a trapped insect struggling to escape. The spider surveyed its universe, but everything beyond that gossamer pinwheel was incomprehensible. The human observer seemed as far-off to the spider as telescopic objects seem to us. Yet there was something kindred: We humans, too, lie at the heart of a great web of space and time whose threads are connected according to laws that dwell in our minds.
Is the web possible without the spider? Are space and time physical objects that would continue to exist even if living creatures were removed from the scene?
Figuring out the nature of the real world has obsessed scientists and philosophers for millennia. Three hundred years ago, the Irish empiricist George Berkeley contributed a particularly prescient observation: The only thing we can perceive are our perceptions. In other words, consciousness is the matrix upon which the cosmos is apprehended. Color, sound, temperature, and the like exist only as perceptions in our head, not as absolute essences. In the broadest sense, we cannot be sure of an outside universe at all.
For centuries, scientists regarded Berkeley’s argument as a philosophical sideshow and continued to build physical models based on the assumption of a separate universe “out there” into which we have each individually arrived. These models presume the existence of one essential reality that prevails with us or without us. Yet since the 1920s, quantum physics experiments have routinely shown the opposite: Results do depend on whether anyone is observing. This is perhaps most vividly illustrated by the famous two-slit experiment. When someone watches a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through the slits, the particle behaves like a bullet, passing through one hole or the other. But if no one observes the particle, it exhibits the behavior of a wave that can inhabit all possibilities—including somehow passing through both holes at the same time.
Some of the greatest physicists have described these results as so confounding they are impossible to comprehend fully, beyond the reach of metaphor, visualization, and language itself. But there is another interpretation that makes them sensible. Instead of assuming a reality that predates life and even creates it, we propose a biocentric picture of reality. From this point of view, life—particularly consciousness—creates the universe, and the universe could not exist without us.
Messing with the Light
Quantum mechanics is the physicist’s most accurate model for describing the world of the atom. But it also makes some of the most persuasive arguments that conscious perception is integral to the workings of the universe. Quantum theory tells us that an unobserved small object (for instance, an electron or a photon—a particle of light) exists only in a blurry, unpredictable state, with no well-defined location or motion until the moment it is observed. This is Werner Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle. Physicists describe the phantom, not-yet-manifest condition as a wave function, a mathematical expression used to find the probability that a particle will appear in any given place. When a property of an electron suddenly switches from possibility to reality, some physicists say its wave function has collapsed.
What accomplishes this collapse? Messing with it. Hitting it with a bit of light in order to take its picture. Just looking at it does the job. Experiments suggest that mere knowledge in the experimenter’s mind is sufficient to collapse a wave function and convert possibility to reality. When particles are created as a pair—for instance, two electrons in a single atom that move or spin together—physicists call them entangled. Due to their intimate connection, entangled particles share a wave function. When we measure one particle and thus collapse its wave function, the other particle’s wave function instantaneously collapses too. If one photon is observed to have a vertical polarization (its waves all moving in one plane), the act of observation causes the other to instantly go from being an indefinite probability wave to an actual photon with the opposite, horizontal polarity—even if the two photons have since moved far from each other.
In 1997 University of Geneva physicist Nicolas Gisin sent two entangled photons zooming along optical fibers until they were seven miles apart. One photon then hit a two-way mirror where it had a choice: either bounce off or go through. Detectors recorded what it randomly did. But whatever action it took, its entangled twin always performed the complementary action. The communication between the two happened at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light. It seems that quantum news travels instantaneously, limited by no external constraints—not even the speed of light. Since then, other researchers have duplicated and refined Gisin’s work. Today no one questions the immediate nature of this connectedness between bits of light or matter, or even entire clusters of atoms.
Before these experiments most physicists believed in an objective, independent universe. They still clung to the assumption that physical states exist in some absolute sense before they are measured.
All of this is now gone for keeps.
Wrestling with Goldilocks
The strangeness of quantum reality is far from the only argument against the old model of reality. There is also the matter of the fine-tuning of the cosmos. Many fundamental traits, forces, and physical constants—like the charge of the electron or the strength of gravity—make it appear as if everything about the physical state of the universe were tailor-made for life. Some researchers call this revelation the Goldilocks principle, because the cosmos is not “too this” or “too that” but rather “just right” for life.
At the moment there are only four explanations for this mystery. The first two give us little to work with from a scientific perspective. One is simply to argue for incredible coincidence. Another is to say, “God did it,” which explains nothing even if it is true.
The third explanation invokes a concept called the anthropic principle, first articulated by Cambridge astrophysicist Brandon Carter in 1973. This principle holds that we must find the right conditions for life in our universe, because if such life did not exist, we would not be here to find those conditions. Some cosmologists have tried to wed the anthropic principle with the recent theories that suggest our universe is just one of a vast multitude of universes, each with its own physical laws. Through sheer numbers, then, it would not be surprising that one of these universes would have the right qualities for life. But so far there is no direct evidence whatsoever for other universes.
The final option is biocentrism, which holds that the universe is created by life and not the other way around. This is an explanation for and extension of the participatory anthropic principle described by the physicist John Wheeler, a disciple of Einstein’s who coined the terms wormhole and black hole.
Seeking Space and Time
Even the most fundamental elements of physical reality, space and time, strongly support a biocentric basis for the cosmos.
According to biocentrism, time does not exist independently of the life that notices it. The reality of time has long been questioned by an odd alliance of philosophers and physicists. The former argue that the past exists only as ideas in the mind, which themselves are neuroelectrical events occurring strictly in the present moment. Physicists, for their part, note that all of their working models, from Isaac Newton’s laws through quantum mechanics, do not actually describe the nature of time. The real point is that no actual entity of time is needed, nor does it play a role in any of their equations. When they speak of time, they inevitably describe it in terms of change. But change is not the same thing as time.
To measure anything’s position precisely, at any given instant, is to lock in on one static frame of its motion, as in the frame of a film. Conversely, as soon as you observe a movement, you cannot isolate a frame, because motion is the summation of many frames. Sharpness in one parameter induces blurriness in the other. Imagine that you are watching a film of an archery tournament. An archer shoots and the arrow flies. The camera follows the arrow’s trajectory from the archer’s bow toward the target. Suddenly the projector stops on a single frame of a stilled arrow. You stare at the image of an arrow in midflight. The pause in the film enables you to know the position of the arrow with great accuracy, but you have lost all information about its momentum. In that frame it is going nowhere; its path and velocity are no longer known. Such fuzziness brings us back to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which describes how measuring the location of a subatomic particle inherently blurs its momentum and vice versa.
All of this makes perfect sense from a biocentric perspective.
Everything we perceive is actively and repeatedly being reconstructed inside our heads in an organized whirl of information. Time in this sense can be defined as the summation of spatial states occurring inside the mind. So what is real? If the next mental image is different from the last, then it is different, period. We can award that change with the word time, but that does not mean there is an actual invisible matrix in which changes occur. That is just our own way of making sense of things. We watch our loved ones age and die and assume that an external entity called time is responsible for the crime.
There is a peculiar intangibility to space, as well. We cannot pick it up and bring it to the laboratory. Like time, space is neither physical nor fundamentally real in our view. Rather, it is a mode of interpretation and understanding. It is part of an animal’s mental software that molds sensations into multidimensional objects.
Most of us still think like Newton, regarding space as sort of a vast container that has no walls. But our notion of space is false. Shall we count the ways? 1. Distances between objects mutate depending on conditions like gravity and velocity, as described by Einstein’s relativity, so that there is no absolute distance between anything and anything else. 2. Empty space, as described by quantum mechanics, is in fact not empty but full of potential particles and fields. 3. Quantum theory even casts doubt on the notion that distant objects are truly separated, since entangled particles can act in unison even if separated by the width of a galaxy.
Unlocking the Cage
In daily life, space and time are harmless illusions. A problem arises only because, by treating these as fundamental and independent things, science picks a completely wrong starting point for investigations into the nature of reality. Most researchers still believe they can build from one side of nature, the physical, without the other side, the living. By inclination and training these scientists are obsessed with mathematical descriptions of the world. If only, after leaving work, they would look out with equal seriousness over a pond and watch the schools of minnows rise to the surface. The fish, the ducks, and the cormorants, paddling out beyond the pads and the cattails, are all part of the greater answer.
Recent quantum studies help illustrate what a new biocentric science would look like. Just months? ago, Nicolas Gisin announced a new twist on his entanglement experiment; in this case, he thinks the results could be visible to the naked eye. At the University of Vienna, Anton Zeilinger’s work with huge molecules called buckyballs pushes quantum reality closer to the macroscopic world. In an exciting extension of this work—proposed by Roger Penrose, the renowned Oxford physicist—not just light but a small mirror that reflects it becomes part of an entangled quantum system, one that is billions of times larger than a buckyball. If the proposed experiment ends up confirming Penrose’s idea, it would also confirm that quantum effects apply to human-scale objects.
Biocentrism should unlock the cages in which Western science has unwittingly confined itself. Allowing the observer into the equation should open new approaches to understanding cognition, from unraveling the nature of consciousness to developing thinking machines that experience the world the same way we do. Biocentrism should also provide stronger bases for solving problems associated with quantum physics and the Big Bang. Accepting space and time as forms of animal sense perception (that is, as biological), rather than as external physical objects, offers a new way of understanding everything from the microworld (for instance, the reason for strange results in the two-slit experiment) to the forces, constants, and laws that shape the universe. At a minimum, it should help halt such dead-end efforts as string theory.
Above all, biocentrism offers a more promising way to bring together all of physics, as scientists have been trying to do since Einstein’s unsuccessful unified field theories of eight decades ago. Until we recognize the essential role of biology, our attempts to truly unify the universe will remain a train to nowhere.
MORE HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_F4nOKDSM
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 30, 2018 - 05:30pm PT
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I'll comment on one point.
Like time, space is neither physical nor fundamentally real in our view.
Time is absolutely real and can never be defeated.
Gross materialists are completely and absolutely subordinate to Time at all times.
Time is NOT material ever.
Time rules every living entity in the material world and is the impersonal ABSOLUTE KING ......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 30, 2018 - 06:51pm PT
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The only thing we can perceive are our perceptions.
A mental giant at work here.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Even the most fundamental elements of physical reality, space and time, strongly support a biocentric basis for the cosmos.
It's pretty hard to ignore egocentricity and inherent arrogance of all such anthropocentric theories. I mean, kind of by definition there was no 'first human' who caused the creation of the universe.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Recent quantum studies help illustrate what a new biocentric science would look like. Just months? ago, Nicolas Gisin announced a new twist on his entanglement experiment; in this case, he thinks the results could be visible to the naked eye. At the University of Vienna, Anton Zeilinger’s work with huge molecules called buckyballs pushes quantum reality closer to the macroscopic world. In an exciting extension of this work—proposed by Roger Penrose, the renowned Oxford physicist—not just light but a small mirror that reflects it becomes part of an entangled quantum system, one that is billions of times larger than a buckyball. If the proposed experiment ends up confirming Penrose’s idea, it would also confirm that quantum effects apply to human-scale objects.
I would be interested in hearing Ed's take on Gisin's and Zeilinger's work. Not his take on Lanza's spin, but his pure unadulterated take on the work.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.220404
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.10615.pdf
Optomechanical Bell Test
Igor Marinković, Andreas Wallucks, Ralf Riedinger, Sungkun Hong, Markus Aspelmeyer, and Simon Gröblacher
Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 220404 – Published 29 November 2018
ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades, experimental tests of Bell-type inequalities have been at the forefront of understanding quantum mechanics and its implications. These strong bounds on specific measurements on a physical system originate from some of the most fundamental concepts of classical physics—in particular that properties of an object are well-defined independent of measurements (realism) and only affected by local interactions (locality). The violation of these bounds unambiguously shows that the measured system does not behave classically, void of any assumption on the validity of quantum theory. It has also found applications in quantum technologies for certifying the suitability of devices for generating quantum randomness, distributing secret keys and for quantum computing. Here we report on the violation of a Bell inequality involving a massive, macroscopic mechanical system. We create light-matter entanglement between the vibrational motion of two silicon optomechanical oscillators, each comprising approx. 1E10 atoms, and two optical modes. This state allows us to violate a Bell inequality by more than 4 standard deviations, directly confirming the nonclassical behavior of our optomechanical system under the fair sampling assumption.
Synopsis: https://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.220404
once again, Bell's Theorem informs on three fundamental assumptions:
"locality, realism, freedom ... In particular, the concept of realism is now somewhat different from what it was in discussions in the 1930s. It is more precisely called counterfactual definiteness; it means that we may think of outcomes of measurements that were not actually performed as being just as much part of reality as those that were made. Locality is short for local relativistic causality. (Currently accepted quantum field theories are local in the terminology of the Lagrangian formalism and axiomatic approach.) Freedom refers to the physical possibility of determining settings on measurement devices independently of the internal state of the physical system being measured."
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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In the above link, it is important to note that these devices do not work anywhere near room temperature,
"The resonators are cryogenically cooled close to their motional ground state inside a dilution refrigerator."
this isolates these systems from the overwhelming number of interactions which spoil their quantum behavior.
My main criticism of Penrose's work is that it ignores this essential feature of biological systems, that they work at room temperature.
While the demonstrations of macroscopic quantum systems are amazing (though liquid Helium systems have been around for decades and are truly macroscopic, and "visible to the naked eye," and also cooled cryogenically) this is not, in my opinion, very relevant to questions regarding the subjective nature of reality.
There are a lot of other very good discussion to be had, invoking quantum mechanics is not one of them.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Derren Brown. I had never heard of him. But recently he appeared on the Waking Up podcast, the subject matter sounded interesting so I checked it out on Netflix.
The Keys to the Mind...
https://samharris.org/podcasts/143-keys-mind/
If you're a "mental life" wonk, two episodes might be worth watching: Sacrifice. The Push.
Both episodes delved into the mental life (the Mind), both dealt in introspection, summoning your own powers to relate, etc.; also both episodes dealt with the critical role stories play in defining/guiding our thoughts and actions.
A third episode by Derren Brown was also intiguing/entertaining too. Entitled: Miracle.
One prominent lesson or take away: Our trains of thought are guided - or else rather easily manipulated. They will go wherever the tracks however laid down - naturally or artificially engineered - direct them to go.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2018 - 09:47am PT
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It's pretty hard to ignore egocentricity and inherent arrogance of all such anthropocentric theories. I mean, kind of by definition there was no 'first human' who caused the creation of the universe.
Before I take a crack at the above, I don't want to give the impression that any of this stuff I've recently presented is material I myself "know" at any depth, in terms of experientially grasping it as a matter of fact. Like everyone else, my psyche is locked into a POV that sees and meets the world as something separate from "me" into which I was miraculously born "into" and which I will eventually make my escape, leaving the world just as I experienced it for the next person to experience, however that all works.
The thing I find most interesting is the thinking these people went through to arrive at what is such a radical and counterintuitive position. Namely, the total impossibility (to them) of trying to use physical, linear/causal "explanations" to peg the "creation" of consciousness, and the apparent difficulties to describe consciousness as the linear/causal output of objective stuff (however you choose to describe it). Also, the total rejection that these challenges will eventually be answered by new physical data, some day forthcoming.
Per the quote above, in my view, what these folks are saying in not an "anthropocentric theory" because consciousness is a given that us humans don't have an exclusive on. "We" don't create the world, rather consciousness creates both "us" AND the world we experience. The tricky part here, perhaps the crux of it all, is seeing how consciousness is not separate from any thing or phenomenon, rather it is exactly the same as what we experience - mirroring the old saying that "emptiness (mind) is form (stuff) and form is emptiness ... exactly." That is one of the greatest mind-f*#ks in Zen. Not surprisingly, Zen has an old koan that addresses this "New Naturalism" in a simple but confounding way. The koan is: What's the reality of the moving flag?
When you realize at depth that there is no "flag" out there (just as there is no "blue" out there), that mind is creating what seems to be a flag rippling in the wind, then you're on your way to seeing this all loud and clear.
I was impressed by scientists of such high pedigrees who reasoned their way to this position, though resistance to these ideas is bound to be intense ("they've misrepresented the data") because it goes so cross grain to the way we naturally think and act and configure the world and ourselves. But some kind of paradigm shift is in the works, because these views are starting to roll in from a growing crowd of very bright and esteemed folks.
Will be interesting to see where it all goes. Like all true adventures, the outcome is unknown.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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But some kind of paradigm shift is in the works, because these views are starting to roll in from a growing crowd of very bright and esteemed folks.
I think this demonstrates a misunderstanding (or willful ignorance) regarding the idea of scientific paradigm shift.
If the Anthropic Principle (in any of its forms) were to provide a means to calculate (yes, it has to calculate) the outcome of various physical phenomena, then it will become a part of physics.
So far, it can be argued that it has not been able to do this. It's been around for decades, and attempts from very smart people to harness it for real scientific work have failed. Not to say that dooms it, but to say that, perhaps, there's nothing new under the Sun (even if, according to some on this thread, the Sun does not exist). If it seems new to you, well, you haven't been paying attention.
As a statement of philosophy, it might be seen as something important (though I doubt it, it is not that new an idea). The excitement (in this thread at least) is that it is seen as providing a "scientific" basis to these philosophical musings.
A bit premature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle#Reception_and_controversies
But the potential for whimsy is very high, e.g.:
Earman John (1987). "The SAP also rises: A critical examination of the anthropic principle". American Philosophical Quarterly. 24: 307–317
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 1, 2018 - 11:50am PT
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Ed, I would encourage you to look at what these people are actually saying, and more importantly, WHY they are considering another position.
Hoffman, Thiese and Lanza are very clear on several key points. First, there are "orthodox" beliefs and first assumptions per consciosness, but there is no no orthodox physicalist "theory" whatsoever per how the brain could mechanically "create" experience, or that said experience could possibly, itself, be an objective phenomenon, which by standard definition is something that exists separate from all taints of subjectivity. To the three scientists, the idea of doing so is ridiculous and self-contradictory.
The other issue is the folk belief that an "objective world" exists separate from an observer, and the orthodox belief that real science should and must define and describe "reality" sans observers. This works wonderfully in one sense, and has delivered the technology that we all now enjoy. But this mode of inquiry runs aground when asked to define and explain (physical/linear/causal) what it is designed to exclude: observers. As all three have said in so many words - the task itself is logically incoherent. Lanza, for one, doesn't call it "whimsical," to use your term, rather absurd - like asking a blind man to read a map. Standard scientific methods have never been asked to describe anything remotely like consciousness, so the paradigm shift mentioned will necessitate science to expand it's toolkit, so to speak.
We can only expect the most nuanced and original thinkers to venture even the smallest step in this direction - we can easily understand why.
It is ludicrous to believe that the Hoffman, Theise and Lanza don't understand the mechanistic take on reality, it's just that they have accepted what to them, at any rate, seems dead obvious - that there is nothing whatsoever inherent in complexity, design, processing (etc) that equates these processes with phenomenological experience.
I suspect that the real sticking point for most will be coming to grips with what the three just mentioned hold as axiomatic: that "real" science must exclude the observer, otherwise true scientists will be victims of woo. Lanza, for one, does a credible job of showing that purely mechanistic takes on reality involve loads of statistically improbable assumptions and magical thinking.
Whatever you or I can say about Lanza, he's clearly from your (hard science) camp, and few would accuse him of "whimsy." Do I agree with all of what he says. Absolutely not, but I don't rule out, on first assumptions, that he isn't onto something.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Again, the notion there is no objective reality without us is ludicrous given we've only been around for a heartbeat on a geological timescale and only just this instant arrived on a cosmological one. I mean, there's just no getting around the need for objective ecologies in order to evolve conscious observers and there's no escaping the egocentricity involved in believing otherwise.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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you can be pretty thick, Largo, go back and reread the title of the article that appears right under the observation,
SAP = strong anthropic principle,
"The SAP rises..." has to be either stupid, or whimsical...
This works wonderfully in one sense, and has delivered the technology that we all now enjoy. But this mode of inquiry runs aground when asked to define and explain (physical/linear/causal) what it is designed to exclude: observers.
here you are trying to have it both ways... first the "orthodox" view works, then the "orthodox" view doesn't work,
except you can't prove that it doesn't. Bell has done quite a bit to advance our understanding of the role of the observer in quantum mechanics. Bell actually worked out the calculations that illustrated what was going on, and while he was not "mainstream" he was extremely important, that importance wasn't fully appreciated in his life time.
Now we are all about what he, one of the foundational modern thinkers about this topic, came up with.
He is also why your rather school boy view of quantum mechanics seems so quaint, and generally irrelevant to the modern discussion.
Bell didn't think that the observer made the universe... I quoted that up thread, but you don't remember (didn't read it or didn't understand it).
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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mind is creating what seems to be a flag rippling in the wind
Does mind get any help from the millions of neurons in your brain which are hooked up with photoreceptors in your eyes?
Your mind does not create the flag. It builds a model of the flag which captures aspects of the flag's structure and behavior. Your mind is unaware of many details of the flag's make-up at the same time.
What is "mind"? The answer is far more comprehensive and richly connected to the rest of our world when seeing the mind as a result of biological evolution, as opposed to seeing the mind as the creator of the universe.
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WBraun
climber
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When you rebel against the Absolute truth or remain ignorant of it you get thrown into the material universe.
Just as a criminal gets thrown into jail or a disobedient son/daughter punished by father.
Both examples indirectly created their destinies although they ultimately do not have the full quantity to create those destinations in complete whole.
These are only crude examples but ultimately require deeper grok to fully understand the material nature and
the superior spiritual nature from which material nature comes from and is subordinate to it ......
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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These are only crude examples but ultimately require deeper grok to fully understand the material nature and
the superior spiritual nature from which material nature comes from and is subordinate to it ......
apparently a "one-way" street in which the "spiritual" can influence the "physical" but not the other way 'round.
Note that in this description, there is a physical description, a physical reality.
And the ability for a subjective thought to influence objective "reality" is an experience we all have.
The origin of the "subjective thought" is part of this thread, and demonstrating whether or not those "subjective thoughts" originate from physical processes part of the question. Is there an explanation constrained by only physical reality? That constraint is severe, but makes a description of reality fundamentally more concise and potentially simpler, based on inferences from empirical observation and deductions of theory, verifiable by all.
But I fully agree with that characterization as being my own personal bias.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Anthropocentrism runs mighty strong on this thread.
Consider...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5V6gdu5ih8
Claims:
(1) Animals like these predators, lion and hyena, likely have minds: Minds that feel, that experience. Minds that calculate. Minds that register pain and pleasure, sorrow and joy, irritation and satisfaction.
re: good and evil
(2) From Lion Mind, the hyena is perceived as evil. So too, from Hyena Mind, the lion is perceived as evil.
Perhaps it's enough to cause some inquiring minds to re-evaluate their concept, their ideation, of good and evil - and to shift it more, a bit more, over and onto an eco-centric natural basis.
I for one am inclined to fully support claims one and two.
...
Here's a great corrective for when you've overdosed on anthropocentrism (not that hard to do nowadays in some venues)...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://youtu.be/6_-jtyhAVTc
I love the question at the end of the Q/A... "Do you think we're now as demoted as we can get? What further humiliations can you see for us in the near future?" (1:33:40)
Just think. 100 years ago, the fraction of the population that had access to this kind of information (e.g., the lion hyena interaction above; a Carl Sagan lecture from 25 years earlier) was darn near negligible. These changes bring with them revolutionary powers... to mind... to thought...to culture. It's all really amazing to behold and ponder.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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What further "humiliations" can I imagine?
I can imagine two (not cited by Sagan above): (1) the understanding that there is no ghost in the machine, that we're 100 percent mechanistic whereby our thought and action are fully caused by an underlying rule set; (2) a First Contact, say Vulcan like, in which it's immediately obvious the species is stronger, faster, smarter, more wise and more attractive than H. sapiens.
So that's two. Two not for the anthropocentric, narcissistic or faint of heart. Probably.
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