Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[Constance]

Through the desert and over the sand . . .

 

[smcder]

@smcder

What I took from it was that the author's view of PCEs is very similar to mine. (Probably no coincidence that I too have an affinity for both representationalism and HOT theories of consciousness.)

Referring to these experiences as "pure consciousness" rightly deserves scare quotes because I don't think there is any consensus on what consciousness is, and therefore what pure consciousness might be.

Furthermore, referring to these experiences as "contentless" is also tricky because its hard to see how one can recall the experience afterward—ineffable as it may have been—if it completely lacked mental content. I agree with the author's suggestion that while these experiences may not be filled with typical contents—like colors, shapes, smells, and sounds—they nevertheless do seem to have content, or a "what it's like."

As far as appealing to brain states as a reductive explanation of these mental states, again my sympathies tend to lie with the author. I feel that we are beings of energy/matter and our streams of consciousness are essentially streams of embodied information.

HOT!

Referring to these experiences as "pure consciousness" rightly deserves scare quotes because I don't think there is any consensus on what consciousness is, and therefore what pure consciousness might be.

That's fair. By the author's admission he has not had these experiences, so what else should fairly be put in quotes?

A book must be an ice ax to break the frozen ice in our souls.

You seem to mostly read things that are very similar to your views ... try this for ... let's say a week, read things that go against your grain, only a little at first maybe ... and start with believing one impossible thing before breakfast. 500 words on my desk by Friday morning.

As far as appealing to brain states as a reductive explanation of these mental states, again my sympathies tend to lie with the author. I feel that we are beings of energy/matter and our streams of consciousness are essentially streams of embodied information.

You "feel" this ... ? That's a start.

 

[smcder]

Through the desert and over the sand . . .

Wish I could watch this ...

I stand here wielding the jaw bone of an ass ... and how many Philistines shall I slay this day? ;-)

 

[Pharoah]

I'm not sure I remember now, it seems like I felt I was getting somewhere with the questions - I'm trying to distinguish HCT from mainstream evolutionary theory, if there is an arrow, then there is teleology (right?) and there is no teleology in mainstream ET ... (but see the article on Where Thomas Nagel Went Wrong for biologists who do believe in arrows) .. you have four stages in the evolution or process of complex life development ... with a fifth (maybe to come) and with something driving things forward. <---- All of that is right?

So my questions are all right there in the text, here they are again in bold ...

1. OK, so there is an arrow (I suspected there was an arrow) - this is teleology then?

2. I understand some biologists do see an arrow, a direction in evolution (Nagel article - where nagel went wrong, posted above) - is there purpose, meaning?

3. what points the arrow, what pulls back the bow and lets fly?
4. (how are you using the word) transcendent

• "surmounting, rising above"
• "of or relating to a spiritual or nonphysical realm."
• ?

All of that is right?
Yes
1. OK, so there is an arrow (I suspected there was an arrow) - this is teleology then?
yes
2. I understand some biologists do see an arrow, a direction in evolution (Nagel article - where nagel went wrong, posted above) - is there purpose, meaning?
a) Yes you could say there is purpose. I did used to use the term "purpose" a lot in the past, but was uncomfortable with it and stopped (for reasons that would be too difficult to explain - To explain... it gives the feeling that the agent with purpose, knows it has purpose, when in fact it does not know)
b) It depends on what you mean by "meaning".
3. what points the arrow, what pulls back the bow and lets fly?
Newton's First law (my version):
"a construct maintains an equilibrium state, unless acted upon by an external force."
So when acted upon by environment, a construct 'seeks' a new equilibrium; its purpose being to acquire an all-embracing (absolute) stable equilibrium. (HCT speaks of 4 different types of distinct construct)
To relate this abstract idea to the evolution of species, any given species (ie, not the individuals of the species, but the species itself) is a construct that seeks an all-embracingly stable physiological adaptation. When the environment is unchanging, that equilibrium gets closer (consequently, evolutionary change is slow). When there is a lot of environmental change, there is a lot of seeking of equilibrium (a lot of physiological adaptation). The environment (which includes the individuals in it) is always changing so there is always the seeking - never to be fulfilled
For the conceptual construct, the human mind seeks an all-embracing concept of reality... we seek an absolute truthful interpretation of reality. We search for what we think is the truth that will stabilise our concept of reality. We think we are driven by rationale thought, but we are not. We are driven by the need to have a stable concept... a conceptual equilibrium, and we rationalise the outcome.
4. (how are you using the word) transcendent
surmounting, beyond maybe.
I have a problem explaining to myself what I mean by transcendent. I currently think it relates to a causal division - which is deep and potentially exciting

 

[smcder]

All of that is right?
Yes
1. OK, so there is an arrow (I suspected there was an arrow) - this is teleology then?
yes
2. I understand some biologists do see an arrow, a direction in evolution (Nagel article - where nagel went wrong, posted above) - is there purpose, meaning?
a) Yes you could say there is purpose. I did used to use the term "purpose" a lot in the past, but was uncomfortable with it and stopped (for reasons that would be too difficult to explain - To explain... it gives the feeling that the agent with purpose, knows it has purpose, when in fact it does not know)
b) It depends on what you mean by "meaning".
3. what points the arrow, what pulls back the bow and lets fly?
Newton's First law (my version):
"a construct maintains an equilibrium state, unless acted upon by an external force."
So when acted upon by environment, a construct 'seeks' a new equilibrium; its purpose being to acquire an all-embracing (absolute) stable equilibrium. (HCT speaks of 4 different types of distinct construct)
To relate this abstract idea to the evolution of species, any given species (ie, not the individuals of the species, but the species itself) is a construct that seeks an all-embracingly stable physiological adaptation. When the environment is unchanging, that equilibrium gets closer (consequently, evolutionary change is slow). When there is a lot of environmental change, there is a lot of seeking of equilibrium (a lot of physiological adaptation). The environment (which includes the individuals in it) is always changing so there is always the seeking - never to be fulfilled
For the conceptual construct, the human mind seeks an all-embracing concept of reality... we seek an absolute truthful interpretation of reality. We search for what we think is the truth that will stabilise our concept of reality. We think we are driven by rationale thought, but we are not. We are driven by the need to have a stable concept... a conceptual equilibrium, and we rationalise the outcome.
4. (how are you using the word) transcendent
surmounting, beyond maybe.
I have a problem explaining to myself what I mean by transcendent. I currently think it relates to a causal division - which is deep and potentially exciting

It is almost as if you were celebrating obscurity ... ;-)

I'm not sure purpose, meaning and transcendent are the right words ... maybe find some Latin ones? These words are well defined with a long history of use in context, so if you don't know what you mean by for example "transcendent" you may need another word?

More later - lots of stuff to respond to above!

 

[Pharoah]

It is almost as if you were celebrating obscurity ... ;-)

I'm not sure purpose, meaning and transcendent are the right words ... maybe find some Latin ones? These words are well defined with a long history of use in context, so if you don't know what you mean by for example "transcendent" you may need another word?

More later - lots of stuff to respond to above!

Hey Steve... don't trouble yourself.
I know what I am talking about and if what I have to say is too square for your little round hole, then don't trouble yourself with it.

 

[smcder]

Hey Steve... don't trouble yourself.
I know what I am talking about and if what I have to say is too square for your little round hole, then don't trouble yourself with it.

Fair enought - but I am very interested to understand HCT ... don't give up on me just yet, please. I've troubled myself about it quite a lot already, so I'm invested. (see also your comment on my profile page) But I will stop commenting if you want, just let me know. I will definitely try and change the tone.

The obscurity comment is based on your own words (Searle, remember - unless that was aimed at me? I wondered that.) and the rest on many expressions you have made regarding difficulties in communicating ideas, even with yourself, most lately just above:

I have a problem explaining to myself what I mean by transcendent.

Perhaps I did cut that last one a bit too close, but the tone in my head wasn't nasty at all ... and I am serious about finding some exact wording, there are shades of meaning in other languages and many philosopher have availed themselves of that fact. Transcendent really may not be the right word, or if it is, it may be too laden with everyday meaning that you may have to invent another right word, many philosophers have done that too.

... I've commented many times before that you use words with an everyday meaning as terminology and that is confusing, at least for me and my little round hole. ;-) *humor*

You claim to be putting a new idea out there and you are putting it our here in public and asking for scrutiny and feedback, new ideas are subject to some pretty rough goes in trying to publish, as you've seen ... I've spent quite a bit of time trying to read and understand your ideas, but your feedback to my feedback is pretty spare, as I said you have to have a rage to be understood, the reader, your reader is never wrong ... hard to balance while you are putting most effort into creating, I know, I understand and you've demonstrated the mother's instinct above and good for you. My own instinct when pushed has always been to push back ... and maybe I am a bit harsh here ... but know, rhetorical fluorishes aside, that I want to see this idea get out into the published world. And I personally want to understand it.

And I just don't think you are ultimately going to be satisfied being the only one to know what you are talking about.

 

[smcder]

All of that is right?
Yes
1. OK, so there is an arrow (I suspected there was an arrow) - this is teleology then?
yes
2. I understand some biologists do see an arrow, a direction in evolution (Nagel article - where nagel went wrong, posted above) - is there purpose, meaning?
a) Yes you could say there is purpose. I did used to use the term "purpose" a lot in the past, but was uncomfortable with it and stopped (for reasons that would be too difficult to explain - To explain... it gives the feeling that the agent with purpose, knows it has purpose, when in fact it does not know)
b) It depends on what you mean by "meaning".
3. what points the arrow, what pulls back the bow and lets fly?
Newton's First law (my version):
"a construct maintains an equilibrium state, unless acted upon by an external force."
So when acted upon by environment, a construct 'seeks' a new equilibrium; its purpose being to acquire an all-embracing (absolute) stable equilibrium. (HCT speaks of 4 different types of distinct construct)
To relate this abstract idea to the evolution of species, any given species (ie, not the individuals of the species, but the species itself) is a construct that seeks an all-embracingly stable physiological adaptation. When the environment is unchanging, that equilibrium gets closer (consequently, evolutionary change is slow). When there is a lot of environmental change, there is a lot of seeking of equilibrium (a lot of physiological adaptation). The environment (which includes the individuals in it) is always changing so there is always the seeking - never to be fulfilled
For the conceptual construct, the human mind seeks an all-embracing concept of reality... we seek an absolute truthful interpretation of reality. We search for what we think is the truth that will stabilise our concept of reality. We think we are driven by rationale thought, but we are not. We are driven by the need to have a stable concept... a conceptual equilibrium, and we rationalise the outcome.
4. (how are you using the word) transcendent
surmounting, beyond maybe.
I have a problem explaining to myself what I mean by transcendent. I currently think it relates to a causal division - which is deep and potentially exciting

2. I understand some biologists do see an arrow, a direction in evolution (Nagel article - where nagel went wrong, posted above) - is there purpose, meaning?

a) Yes you could say there is purpose. I did used to use the term "purpose" a lot in the past, but was uncomfortable with it and stopped (for reasons that would be too difficult to explain - To explain... it gives the feeling that the agent with purpose, knows it has purpose, when in fact it does not know)

That is a good instinct, I understand ... our very language is slanted toward these kinds of meanings, a remarkable number of words are rooted in some kind of religious sense, purpose is tied up with one who purposes ... again, I don't think all language have this bias, I have a book with foreign words and phrases that are untranslatable (even if we have the idea, we don't have a clear way to express it - like schadenfreude in German) ... still, I think there may be a broader human (or Western) tendency to ask of science the kinds of answers to "why" questions that we get from another person. So when we ask of science why does evolution tend toward more complexity, we want an answer something like "why did you quit your job?" - for me, anyway, the kind of answer I get back from a person has a different kind of satisfaction than the kind I get back from science ... that's a confusion but it can be answered in the way we write about scientific ideas. Maybe.

This is a good example:

. what points the arrow, what pulls back the bow and lets fly?
Newton's First law (my version):
"a construct maintains an equilibrium state, unless acted upon by an external force."
So when acted upon by environment, a construct 'seeks' a new equilibrium; its purpose being to acquire an all-embracing (absolute) stable equilibrium. (HCT speaks of 4 different types of distinct construct)

The four year old in me wants to ask "why" here.

To relate this abstract idea to the evolution of species, any given species (ie, not the individuals of the species, but the species itself) is a construct that seeks an all-embracingly stable physiological adaptation. When the environment is unchanging, that equilibrium gets closer (consequently, evolutionary change is slow). When there is a lot of environmental change, there is a lot of seeking of equilibrium (a lot of physiological adaptation). The environment (which includes the individuals in it) is always changing so there is always the seeking - never to be fulfilled

Right and that seems to me to be just in line with traditional theories of evolution. Now the 4 differnt types of distinct construct is something new.

(And what I mean I think I'm getting somewhere, I remember now, is I seem to be finding some hand holds or some questions I can now go in and look for answers.)

For the conceptual construct, the human mind seeks an all-embracing concept of reality... we seek an absolute truthful interpretation of reality. We search for what we think is the truth that will stabilise our concept of reality. We think we are driven by rationale thought, but we are not. We are driven by the need to have a stable concept... a conceptual equilibrium, and we rationalise the outcome.

That last two sentences I think is very much in line with Nietzsche and his pre and post cursors. I'm tempted to agree with that. I'm not sure I can reconcile it with the first past of that paragraph though - why do we seek absolute truth? Why do we fool ourselves? Why not an honest search for equilibrium - in fact, some would claim they are doing just that now in the post-modern mindset and that absolut truth and the need for it have been discarded.

I would want also to know more about "causal division". But that seems an apt piece of terminology in which to place the meaning of transcendent.

 

[Constance]

A brief break to read the following paper might be clarifying here:

Wambacq, Judith
Subject-object in Martin Heidegger, Bruno Latour and Manuel De Landa

Subject-object in Martin Heidegger, Bruno Latour and Manuel De Landa#

{follow the word 'transcend'}

 

[Constance]

Also helpful: Nicolai Hartmann:

"According to Hartmann, the problem of knowledge is inseparable from the phenomenon of knowledge, and thus the aporetics of knowledge can only be fully illuminated by investigation of the phenomenology of knowledge. The analysis of the problem of knowledge goes hand in hand with the analysis of the phenomenon of knowledge. Since the “narrower problem of knowledge” is also inseparable from the problem of being, epistemology may be inseparable from both phenomenology and ontology. . . ."

The Power of Language: Philosophy and Society: Nicolai Hartmann's Outlines of a Metaphysics of Knowledge

 

[Pharoah]

Fair enought - but I am very interested to understand HCT ... don't give up on me just yet, please. I've troubled myself about it quite a lot already, so I'm invested. (see also your comment on my profile page) But I will stop commenting if you want, just let me know. I will definitely try and change the tone.

The obscurity comment is based on your own words (Searle, remember - unless that was aimed at me? I wondered that.) and the rest on many expressions you have made regarding difficulties in communicating ideas, even with yourself, most lately just above:

I have a problem explaining to myself what I mean by transcendent.

Perhaps I did cut that last one a bit too close, but the tone in my head wasn't nasty at all ... and I am serious about finding some exact wording, there are shades of meaning in other languages and many philosopher have availed themselves of that fact. Transcendent really may not be the right word, or if it is, it may be too laden with everyday meaning that you may have to invent another right word, many philosophers have done that too.

... I've commented many times before that you use words with an everyday meaning as terminology and that is confusing, at least for me and my little round hole. ;-) *humor*

You claim to be putting a new idea out there and you are putting it our here in public and asking for scrutiny and feedback, new ideas are subject to some pretty rough goes in trying to publish, as you've seen ... I've spent quite a bit of time trying to read and understand your ideas, but your feedback to my feedback is pretty spare, as I said you have to have a rage to be understood, the reader, your reader is never wrong ... hard to balance while you are putting most effort into creating, I know, I understand and you've demonstrated the mother's instinct above and good for you. My own instinct when pushed has always been to push back ... and maybe I am a bit harsh here ... but know, rhetorical fluorishes aside, that I want to see this idea get out into the published world. And I personally want to understand it.

And I just don't think you are ultimately going to be satisfied being the only one to know what you are talking about.

Is it Heraclitus who is famed (and celebrated) for his obscurity? And it was Searle not you I was referring to.
Steve. I spent the best part of five hours sitting on my backside trying to work out how to answer the questions you posed in a way that I thought might be understood. After version 20 I thought... what's he really asking... does he know? So I asked for clarity and you gave it. I reacted out of frustration and felt your questions were not wanting answers and I missed the humour (?).

There is a teleology, but I don't use the word purpose, nor the word meaning in my writing for good reason (except in old versions). If I have to use them now, I have to do so by qualifying them, and neither of us have the patience for that.
I am not intelligent enough to understand what some philosophers mean by their use of the word transcendent, but I understand that people mean different things by the same term. I get confused. When I use it, I am saying that one hierarchical level represents the environment in a way that is entirely different (transcendentally separated) from the next level. The environmental causes to one hierarchical level lead to transcendentally separated types of effect thereby denying downward causal effects (I think). The constructs are informational about the environment and the type of information for each level is entirely distinct (unmixable... transcendentally isolated from one another).
That is what I mean by transcendental. I can't express it very well. But it is important to have this idea into the concept of emergence.

Newton's law why? Very good question. There is no answer except I will say that if two interacting bodies ("constructs" expands the Newtonian concept of material "bodies" beyond the realm of mass and velocity, and thereby incorporates the idea of mental constructs that are thought in terms of not being material) do not behave equitably when interacting with one another and do not determine an equilibrium in their response to one another, then the universe cannot exist. There may be universes where Newton's law does not hold, but they do not lead to the physical relations that our universe has. Mental agency can only come about in a universe where this principle holds of constructs, but why this should be so is ultimately unanswerable.

"Why do we fool ourselves? Why not an honest search for equilibrium"
Welcome to construct #5 grasshopper.

 

[smcder]

Is it Heraclitus who is famed (and celebrated) for his obscurity? And it was Searle not you I was referring to.
Steve. I spent the best part of five hours sitting on my backside trying to work out how to answer the questions you posed in a way that I thought might be understood. After version 20 I thought... what's he really asking... does he know? So I asked for clarity and you gave it. I reacted out of frustration and felt your questions were not wanting answers and I missed the humour (?).

There is a teleology, but I don't use the word purpose, nor the word meaning in my writing for good reason (except in old versions). If I have to use them now, I have to do so by qualifying them, and neither of us have the patience for that.
I am not intelligent enough to understand what some philosophers mean by their use of the word transcendent, but I understand that people mean different things by the same term. I get confused. When I use it, I am saying that one hierarchical level represents the environment in a way that is entirely different (transcendentally separated) from the next level. The environmental causes to one hierarchical level lead to transcendentally separated types of effect thereby denying downward causal effects (I think). The constructs are informational about the environment and the type of information for each level is entirely distinct (unmixable... transcendentally isolated from one another).
That is what I mean by transcendental. I can't express it very well. But it is important to have this idea into the concept of emergence.

Newton's law why? Very good question. There is no answer except I will say that if two interacting bodies ("constructs" expands the Newtonian concept of material "bodies" beyond the realm of mass and velocity, and thereby incorporates the idea of mental constructs that are thought in terms of not being material) do not behave equitably when interacting with one another and do not determine an equilibrium in their response to one another, then the universe cannot exist. There may be universes where Newton's law does not hold, but they do not lead to the physical relations that our universe has. Mental agency can only come about in a universe where this principle holds of constructs, but why this should be so is ultimately unanswerable.

"Why do we fool ourselves? Why not an honest search for equilibrium"
Welcome to construct #5 grasshopper.

 

[smcder]

Understandable ... based on posterior motives. humor ;-) It was a quick reply and to say I would comment more later, I can see where it would come across off the cuff.



I just listened to something on Heraclitus, he is famed for not stepping into the same river twice. What we have of him is very fragmentary, so I'm not sure it's him you have in mind - but he's a good candidate.

And now, to work.

There is a teleology, but I don't use the word purpose, nor the word meaning in my writing for good reason (except in old versions). If I have to use them now, I have to do so by qualifying them, and neither of us have the patience for that.

Where Thomas Nagel Went Wrong - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

(this article may be of interest to @Burnt State and those following the ET thread too, this part is for them:

Joan Roughgarden, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, agrees that evolutionary biologists can be nasty when crossed. "I mean, these guys are impervious to contrary evidence and alternative formulations," she says. "What we see in evolution is stasis—conceptual stasis, in my view—where people are ardently defending their formulations from the early 70s.

The rest of it on Natural Teleology and those who support (a distinguished crew) may be of interest to you.

PS Roughgarden is a great name for an ecologist ...

I am not intelligent enough to understand what some philosophers mean by their use of the word transcendent, but I understand that people mean different things by the same term. I get confused. When I use it, I am saying that one hierarchical level represents the environment in a way that is entirely different (transcendentally separated) from the next level. The environmental causes to one hierarchical level lead to transcendentally separated types of effect thereby denying downward causal effects (I think). The constructs are informational about the environment and the type of information for each level is entirely distinct (unmixable... transcendentally isolated from one another).

That is what I mean by transcendental. I can't express it very well. But it is important to have this idea into the concept of emergence

OK, that is the sense I got generally ... if I remember there is some terminology on the SEP article about emergence that may be helpful. Let me look now and then make further response, OK?

 

[Pharoah]

Understandable ... based on posterior motives. humor ;-) It was a quick reply and to say I would comment more later, I can see where it would come across off the cuff.



I just listened to something on Heraclitus, he is famed for not stepping into the same river twice. What we have of him is very fragmentary, so I'm not sure it's him you have in mind - but he's a good candidate.

And now, to work.

There is a teleology, but I don't use the word purpose, nor the word meaning in my writing for good reason (except in old versions). If I have to use them now, I have to do so by qualifying them, and neither of us have the patience for that.

Where Thomas Nagel Went Wrong - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

(this article may be of interest to @Burnt State and those following the ET thread too, this part is for them:

Joan Roughgarden, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, agrees that evolutionary biologists can be nasty when crossed. "I mean, these guys are impervious to contrary evidence and alternative formulations," she says. "What we see in evolution is stasis—conceptual stasis, in my view—where people are ardently defending their formulations from the early 70s.

The rest of it on Natural Teleology and those who support (a distinguished crew) may be of interest to you.

PS Roughgarden is a great name for an ecologist ...

I am not intelligent enough to understand what some philosophers mean by their use of the word transcendent, but I understand that people mean different things by the same term. I get confused. When I use it, I am saying that one hierarchical level represents the environment in a way that is entirely different (transcendentally separated) from the next level. The environmental causes to one hierarchical level lead to transcendentally separated types of effect thereby denying downward causal effects (I think). The constructs are informational about the environment and the type of information for each level is entirely distinct (unmixable... transcendentally isolated from one another).

That is what I mean by transcendental. I can't express it very well. But it is important to have this idea into the concept of emergence

OK, that is the sense I got generally ... if I remember there is some terminology on the SEP article about emergence that may be helpful. Let me look now and then make further response, OK?

Nagel and ‘Mind and Cosmos: Why The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False'
"The history of science has been a history of driving out teleological explanations – and the reason that represents progress is that teleological explanations are just not very good; they are usually vacuous and provide no real insight or predictive power."
I need to drop Nagel a line I think

 

[smcder]

"Crucial to an account of emergence, however, is a view concerning the relationship of such levels.

On this score, we find that there are, in fact, two rather different pictures of emergence, one represented by Mill and Broad, and the other represented by Alexander.

1. For Mill and Broad, emergence involves the appearance of primitive high-level causal interactions that are additional to those of the more fundamental levels.

2. Alexander, by contrast, is committed only to the appearance of novel qualities and associated, high-level causal patterns which cannot be directly expressed in terms of the more fundamental entities and principles. But these patterns do not supplement, much less supersede, the fundamental interactions. Rather, they are macroscopic patterns running through those very microscopic interactions. Emergent qualities are something truly new under the sun, but the world's fundamental dynamics remain unchanged."

It seems HCT is more at #1. The most popular contemporary take is epistemological - that breaks into two and then the article continues to discuss ontolofgical emergence - you may be well versed in this and have already rejected these categories, or maybe there is something helpful there.

Newton's law why? Very good question. There is no answer except I will say that if two interacting bodies ("constructs" expands the Newtonian concept of material "bodies" beyond the realm of mass and velocity, and thereby incorporates the idea of mental constructs that are thought in terms of not being material) do not behave equitably when interacting with one another and do not determine an equilibrium in their response to one another, then the universe cannot exist. There may be universes where Newton's law does not hold, but they do not lead to the physical relations that our universe has. Mental agency can only come about in a universe where this principle holds of constructs, but why this should be so is ultimately unanswerable.

OK ... so "this principle" refers to the ability of mental constructs (non material) to interact with physical ones, correct?

So we have a 1. direction, teleology 2. emergence and it appears to follow Mills and Broad (this is something I can look at more closely now when I go back into HCT to read) 3. mental causation - this is very helpful

"Why do we fool ourselves? Why not an honest search for equilibrium"
Welcome to construct #5 grasshopper.

Ah, good ... look forward to that, I think I have read a bit on #5, you have something on the web ... or you put something in the forums as to what you think #5 will be, right?

 

[smcder]

Nagel and ‘Mind and Cosmos: Why The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False'
"The history of science has been a history of driving out teleological explanations – and the reason that represents progress is that teleological explanations are just not very good; they are usually vacuous and provide no real insight or predictive power."
I need to drop Nagel a line I think

I've been meaning to bug him myself. From what I read in his book, he champions natural teleology but doesn't have a good explanation himself.

 

[smcder]

"causal division" sounds like it might work for the relationship of levels ... as described in the SEP?

Emergent Properties (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[smcder]

@Pharoah - a short way through the Nagel article, see the lost bit on the bullet list
also may be interesting to @Burnt State

"But highly regarded scientists have made similar arguments. "Life is almost bound to arise, in a molecular form not very different from its form on Earth," wrote Christian de Duve, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine, in 1995. Robert Hazen, a mineralogist and biogeologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, struck a similar note in 2007: "With autotrophy, biochemistry is wired into the universe. The self-made cell emerges from geochemistry as inevitably as basalt or granite." Harold J. Morowitz, a biophysicist at George Mason University, argued that evolution has an arrow built into it: "We start with observations, and if the evolving cosmos has an observed direction, rejecting that view is clearly nonempirical. There need not necessarily be a knowable end point, but there may be an arrow."

"When you have millions of species taking random walks through the wilds of genetic variation and natural selection, some will, by the luck of the draw, become more complex and more capable. That is, when there is an overall increase in variance, some of the variants will be more complex and capable than their ancestors. Biologists say that such ascents in complexity happen "passively."
Yet some scientists think that increases in complexity also happen "actively," that is, driven by physical laws that directly favor increases in complexity. As a group, these scientists have no sympathy for intelligent design. However, they do see reasons to think that seen as a whole, life does go from simple to complex, from instinctual to intellectual. And they are asking if there are fundamental laws of nature that make it happen."

• Stuart Kauffman - autocatylytic networks
• Simon Conway Morris - natural structures such as eyes, neurons, brains, and hands are so beneficial that they will get invented over and over again ... attractors in an abstract biological space that pull life in their direction. Contingency and catastrophe will delay them but cannot stop them. ... "If we humans had not evolved, then something more or less identical would have emerged sooner or later."
• zero-force evolutionary law (diversity and complexity necessarily increase even without a change in the environment)
• The chemist Addy Pross, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel, argues that life exhibits "dynamic kinetic stability," in which self-replicating systems become more stable through becoming more complex—and are therefore inherently driven to do so.

 

[smcder]

@Pharoah - a short way through the Nagel article, see the last bit on the bulleted list below

also may be interesting to @Burnt State

"But highly regarded scientists have made similar arguments. "Life is almost bound to arise, in a molecular form not very different from its form on Earth," wrote Christian de Duve, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine, in 1995. Robert Hazen, a mineralogist and biogeologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, struck a similar note in 2007: "With autotrophy, biochemistry is wired into the universe. The self-made cell emerges from geochemistry as inevitably as basalt or granite." Harold J. Morowitz, a biophysicist at George Mason University, argued that evolution has an arrow built into it: "We start with observations, and if the evolving cosmos has an observed direction, rejecting that view is clearly nonempirical. There need not necessarily be a knowable end point, but there may be an arrow."

"When you have millions of species taking random walks through the wilds of genetic variation and natural selection, some will, by the luck of the draw, become more complex and more capable. That is, when there is an overall increase in variance, some of the variants will be more complex and capable than their ancestors. Biologists say that such ascents in complexity happen "passively."

Yet some scientists think that increases in complexity also happen "actively," that is, driven by physical laws that directly favor increases in complexity. As a group, these scientists have no sympathy for intelligent design. However, they do see reasons to think that seen as a whole, life does go from simple to complex, from instinctual to intellectual. And they are asking if there are fundamental laws of nature that make it happen."

• Stuart Kauffman - autocatylytic networks
• Simon Conway Morris - natural structures such as eyes, neurons, brains, and hands are so beneficial that they will get invented over and over again ... attractors in an abstract biological space that pull life in their direction. Contingency and catastrophe will delay them but cannot stop them. ... "If we humans had not evolved, then something more or less identical would have emerged sooner or later."
• zero-force evolutionary law (diversity and complexity necessarily increase even without a change in the environment)
• The chemist Addy Pross, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel, argues that life exhibits "dynamic kinetic stability," in which self-replicating systems become more stable through becoming more complex—and are therefore inherently driven to do so.

 

[smcder]

We would probably agree that some words are more anthropomorphically loaded than others and that "progress" lies at the high end of that scale. It probably should be discarded. But I toss it in as a kind of place holder for a hypothetical natural process that results in ever increasing complexity, or perhaps a reversal or balancing of entropy, over time. The concept of increasing vs decreasing entropy in open and closed systems seems a straightforward concept at first glance. But it soon outgrows the size of something around which I can wrap my tiny mind.

What (I think) I am driving at in postulating a universality for the concept of complexity is the role of the observer (human or otherwise) in evaluation, what role the observer plays and whatever value judgements may accrue. It's another way of asking if complexity is an inherent property of nature, or rather an emergent reality modeling tool found only in conscious minds.

Still other scientists have asked how we could measure increases in complexity without being biased by our human-centric perspective. Robert Hazen, working with the Nobel Prize winner Jack Szostak, has proposed a metric he calls "functional information," which measures the number of functions and relationships an organism has relative to its environment. The Harvard astrophysicist Eric Chaisson has proposed measuring a quantity that he calls "energy-rate density": how much energy flows through one gram of a system per second. He argues that when he plots energy-rate density against the emergence of new species, the clear result is an overall increase in complexity over time.

...
But Nagel's goal was valid: to point out that fundamental questions of origins, evolution, and intelligence remain unanswered, and to question whether current ways of thinking are up to the task. A really good book on this subject would need to be both scientific and philosophical: scientific to show what is known, philosophical to show how to go beyond what is known. (A better term might be "metascientific," that is, talking about the science and about how to make new sciences.)
The pieces of this book are scattered about the landscape, in a thousand scraps of ideas from biologists, physicists, physicians, chemists, mathematicians, journalists, public intellectuals, and philosophers. But no book has yet emerged that is mighty enough to shove aside the current order, persuading scientists and nonscientists alike, sparking new experiments, changing syllabi, rejiggering budget priorities, spawning new departments, and changing human language and ways of thought forever. On the Origin of Species did it in 1859. We await the next Darwin

(or Wallace ... or whoever it really was ;-)