personhood

[henry quirk]

"The way I figure it, it's not important for us to be able to understand it. Insomuch as it's difficult to understand, the details may be easily explainable at a level that's beyond our grasp. That is to say-- we don't understand how biology could produce consciousness, but that's not important."

Oh, I can't disagree more. it's foundational: Who am I? What am I? What is my place in the Grand Scheme? Is there a Grand Scheme?

Existentially, practically, the (search for the) accurate and complete description of the individual and his place is what drives all endeavor.

#

"What we DO know is that water and amino acids are ubiquitous, the conditions for life aren't as delicate as we once believed, and the one place we've seen it arise, it happened almost immediately. And this is the flaw in reasoning that we can't avoid-- we're looking at a small sample size. Although there's a nearly infinite number of chances for life to arise, we only know the details about this ONE instance. There's no conclusion we can really draw from that."

Sure, we have ice in deep space and at least one example of complex, self-replicating organic molecules (though we have no real understanding of abiogenesis...simply: we don't know why amino acids, and everything built atop them, exists), but having piles of bricks everywhere doesn't mean houses are sure to follow.

#

"The odds, the way a bookie would figure them, that our planet is the "winning lottery ticket" are as likely as, well, winning the lottery."

Jus now: I googled the following...

*what are the odds humankind is alone in the universe?
*what are the odds humankind is not alone in the universe?
*what are the odds the universe is teeming with life?

Try it. And try you're own versions of the questions.

#

"The bet I'm taking is the conservative, "play it safe" bet. The odds are that matter organizes into life almost everywhere, and when it does it has consciousness by default, because consciousness is just a biological operating system. Does that demean the value of a human life? I don't think it does. And even if it did, it doesn't influence the odds one way or the other."

Me: I say matter is rare, complex matter is rarer, living matter is rarer still, and self-aware matter is the rarest of all. As I say: with only 4 (or 5) percent of the universe bein' matter, and most of that just hydrogen in one state or another, how can self-aware matter be considered as anything but rare (and special)?

[henry quirk]

yep

[Flint]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

"The way I figure it, it's not important for us to be able to understand it. Insomuch as it's difficult to understand, the details may be easily explainable at a level that's beyond our grasp. That is to say-- we don't understand how biology could produce consciousness, but that's not important."

Oh, I can't disagree more. it's foundational: Who am I? What am I? What is my place in the Grand Scheme? Is there a Grand Scheme?

Existentially, practically, the (search for the) accurate and complete description of the individual and his place is what drives all endeavor.

Sure, it's important to WANT to understand things. But our capacity to understand a thing, our desire to understand a thing, and how the thing actually works are completely independent variables. If you weight your answers on "wanting" an answer, you get a wrong answer.

[henry quirk]

Originally Posted by Flint

Sure, it's important to WANT to understand things. But our capacity to understand a thing, our desire to understand a thing, and how the thing actually works are completely independent variables. If you weight your answers on "wanting" an answer, you get a wrong answer.

We'll crack it, cuz we want to, cuz we can.

-----

cross pollination: https://forum.philosophynow.org/view...428606#p428606

[Flint]

And yet it continues to work the way it does regardless of whether we understand it or not. It doesn't require our understanding, therefore our understanding isn't important-- to the thing itself.

From an objective point of view, the simplest solution is that consciousness has a biological origin, like every other feature of living organisms.

Arguments against:
1) We don't understand how a biological mechanism could produce free will. This doesn't affect the likelihood of any particular answer. Our understanding is not a factor.
2) A biological origin of consciousness could mean that our decision-making has a deterministic nature. This doesn't affect the likelihood of any particular answer. Our reckoning of what is intuitive is not a factor.
3) A deterministic origin of consciousness could have serious ethical consequences. This doesn't affect the likelihood of any particular answer. Our desire for positive outcomes is not a factor.
4) It feels wrong, bad, uncomfortable, or unintuitive in any way whatsoever. None of this affects the likelihood of any particular answer in the slightest amount.
5) We have a gut feeling that it's more than biology. This doesn't affect the likelihood of any particular answer-- the universe doesn't care about our bias.

[henry quirk]

This applies to everything, the whole of the world, from the Planck length clear up to the universal.

There's no reason to plumb the depths, to climb the mountains, to leap into space, to probe the atom, to dissect the brain, to discern the geometry of the psyche, to decipher DNA, to figure out how birds fly, to investigate why stone is inedible, to know how a star works, to...

The depths are fine without us, the peaks don't require us, space is indifferent to us, atoms do okay all by themselves, brains tick along without an inkling of why or how, psyches persist even in self-ignorance, DNA requires no oversight, birds fly without a care as to how, stones 'hurt' and mebbe 'kill' if ingested (we don't need to know 'why'), the sun is there and that's all we need to know.

Man, curiosity is a bitch! Life would be so much better if we weren't always poking our noses into the inner workings of things, sussin' out the undergirdings.

[Flint]

Yep, things work just fine without us. There's no need for us to break our necks trying to force wrong answers onto things. And that's not a victimless crime-- when we box ourselves in with cognitive errors, we're going down the path of not being correct about anything else.

[henry quirk]

"Yep, things work just fine without us."

Yet here we are, in every-increasing numbers, diggin' 'round the inner workings of Reality, tryin' to figure it out, gettin' it wrong some of the time, gettin' it right some of the time.

Ain't no stoppin' us now, so: you might as well relax and enjoy the ride.

#

"There's no need for us to break our necks trying to force wrong answers onto things."

There's no need to find the right answers either, but -- as I say -- we're doin' it anyway.

#

"when we box ourselves in with cognitive errors, we're going down the path of not being correct about anything else.'

Except, of course, when we go down the right path. The universe opens ups a little bit more when that happens.

[Flint]

goddangit henry let me argue with you

stop being reasonable

[henry quirk]

I just wanna talk: agree where we can, disagree where we must, and part company at least not thinkin' poorly of one another.

[lumberjim]

Do you think.... Because when we think, we think in words.... That the language you know has a deterministic effect on the thoughts you can think? The ideas you can grasp...

Can you think without words? Intuitively.

Or are both happening within us?

[Flint]

listen, you're a bad man and I hate your face

we will NEVER agree on ANYTHING !! think the sky is blue? WRONG, idiot.

[Flint]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

Do you think.... Because when we think, we think in words.... That the language you know has a deterministic effect on the thoughts you can think? The ideas you can grasp...

I read about study that said language does affect the direction of our thoughts, like, when a language has different verb/noun order it can produce quantitatively different ideas about cause and effect. Or something

[henry quirk]

"listen"

Yes?

"you're a bad man"

True.

"and I hate your face"

I ain't too pretty, I give ya that.

"we will NEVER agree on ANYTHING !!"

You're right.

"think the sky is blue?"

Not all the time: sometimes it's red or orange or pitch black with lil speckles of white.

WRONG, idiot.

Oh, you were talkin' to tw...my mistake.

[henry quirk]

"Do you think.... Because when we think, we think in words.... That the language you know has a deterministic effect on the thoughts you can think? The ideas you can grasp..."

I think a large vocabulary can broaden or widen or nuance thinking, but I don't think it determines it any more than a small one does.

#

"Can you think without words? Intuitively."

I think some dogs I've known have done it exactly that way. Might not be possible for us: we're symbol-makers and -assigners, signifiers of the world, semiotic beings.

#

"Or are both happening within us?"

If you count emotion as thinking without words: yes.