Reductionism And Materialism Are Not Scientific Givens

[Alice]

...we have only begun to touch the hem of the nature of matter and energy.

 

 

 

beautiful wording ....

[Legion]

it would seem to have appeared magically at the level of organic life.

I believe that a certain type of organization can be present or absent. If the organization which is life is absent, if the natural system we are examining is not an organism, then we are not going to see living behavior.

 

You don't think an atom is "aware" of its surrounding environment (cautiously using the term 'aware')?

No, I don’t believe an atom is aware (however cautiously we use the term). And I believe you are using the term consciousness too loosely also. Saying consciousness without mind strikes me almost as saying CEO without a company.

 

Awareness should not be conflated with interaction in my opinion. Virtually everything in the universe from atoms to societies interacts with their environments. But I believe only some fraction of these natural systems’ interactions should be recognized as being indicative of life or mind.

 

But I must stress that I don’t understand life or mind very well. And I believe no one here does. Doesn’t this imply that we are agreeing and disagreeing based on a shallow grasp of our subjects?

 

Look, I think many of us here believe that science is more than reductionism. And that it will require more than reductionism to understand, such that we can predict and explain, the nature and behavior of life or mind. I have certainly come to suspect that reductionism fails to lend legitimacy to important perspectives on organisms, for instance.

 

However I can’t claim that by seeing the deficiencies of reductionism, I can now know what all the scientifically legitimate alternatives are. If someone says our new found openness to alternatives means that we abandon all notions of causality, measurement, rigorous reasoning and language, and verification/falsification of hypotheses then I tend to reject this. I think we can have all these things and yet have approaches which differ with reductionism.

[Antlerman]

it would seem to have appeared magically at the level of organic life.

I believe that a certain type of organization can be present or absent. If the organization which is life is absent, if the natural system we are examining is not an organism, then we are not going to see living behavior.

Not like biological organisms exhibit it. Of course not. But what are living organisms exhibiting? Awareness of the surrounding environments? Interactions within the rules of their form? An understanding of their function? But on what level? Aren't they just acting as part of their environment as well as the water molecule is within its?

 

Is it because they have biological bodies that you don't perceive them as related in how they operate? And how is it that they operate except basically a certain level of awareness of their environments with increasingly more complex patterns of behavior.

You don't think an atom is "aware" of its surrounding environment (cautiously using the term 'aware')?

No, I don’t believe an atom is aware (however cautiously we use the term). And I believe you are using the term consciousness too loosely also. Saying consciousness without mind strikes me almost as saying CEO without a company.

Are you saying plants posses mind? You already said before that they posses consciousness. If so, where is their mind? They don't have a brain. For that matter neither do worms, yet they certainly are aware of their environment, as are a myriad other aware creatures on the planet that don't have any brain at all - including plants.

 

You'll need to clarify your CEO analogy here. It escapes me what you mean at the moment in light of what you acknowledged already. If you say plants don't have consciousness, then you must also say numerous animal species aren't because they don't have any brain either, not even a rudimentary one.

 

Awareness should not be conflated with interaction in my opinion. Virtually everything in the universe from atoms to societies interacts with their environments. But I believe only some fraction of these natural systems’ interactions should be recognized as being indicative of life or mind.

Me too. But I don't think we should restrict consciousness to life or mind as you are doing for some reason. Goodness, just because a mineral looks static to you, open it up on an atomic level and their is a whole world of activity a goin' on in there! It's not 'dead', by any means! "This electron goes here, you belong there, I want that from you, lets bond this together, that fits, this doesn't, you don't belong, go away, you stay, etc, etc, etc...." (if we wish to put it in human terms).

 

How the hell does that happen? "Well, those are the physical properties of it, and they are simply following the rules." Something like that? Hmmm.... And what is it that happens at the animal level? Aren't we simply following the rules like them, except on our plane of existence with our plane's set of rules, likewise aware of our environment, from the amoeba, to the worm, to the fish, to the spider, to the dog, to the lion, to the human. And not just within their external environments, but their internal environments as well...

 

What do you consider awareness to be?

[Franko47]

(what a fantastic thread)

 

 

I suppose that a passive consciousness would be aware, but perhaps not deterministic. It might not even be able to direct it's will to affect it's environment. Without the tools to recognize such a thing, we would likely pass it over for some time. Not that I believe that plants and such (that sort of would fit this criteria) are self-aware past the mere "reactive" stage, but this might be easy to miss on an alien planet. This also ties in a bit to what I find favorable about some of OM's points.

 

Being able to make independent decisions beyond programming is not necessarily indicative of consciousness or sentience, or that which we might even credit with the pet dog or cat scheming for more treats. That would be a form of projected extrapolation, and a good computer program could do this as well as emulate the appearance of directed will.

 

A network of consciousness might not be specifically self-aware, but might react according to the communal will of many parts. (like the Borg from Star Trek) As we see ourselves as distinct singular entities, some systems of consciousness might involve such a massive network of integral contributing "sub-minds", that it would not be in fact self-aware, yet it's participles could be. (As in the internet is not self-aware, yet all it's human participants are).

 

I'm not sure that emotion or compassion is a necessary requirement of a self-aware consciousness. Feelings imply vulnerability; this may have been edited out or refined into a more useful sense of awareness during an evolutionary process. I've often argued that if there is a Universal God, it is a consciousness that is largely lacking the same kind of feelings and emotions that we associate with our human experience. It's sophistication and perfected state of awareness would control any such inclinations the way in which an emotionally mature person learns to cope with many circumstances which can be very emotionally intimidating to a lesser developed or younger person.

 

Part of my actual theory that dissolves OT God, actually. Such an entity would not possess such underdeveloped emotional responses and curiously uncontrolled passion and reactions to what should be easily predictable events in the affairs of it's creation.

 

Anyway...

[Legion]

What do you consider awareness to be?

I have the feeling we’re not communicating very well Antlerman, and I don’t know why.

 

I don’t know what minds are. I don’t believe I understand them sufficiently to define their nature. But I suspect that minds are an extension of, or elaboration of, capabilities which all organisms possess. And I once saw where a biologist said, “Mind is to brain as life is to organism.”

 

I also suspect that you do not understand minds sufficiently to define their nature. I think most here do not. And this is the point. Perhaps reductionism, despite its fantastic ability to probe some aspects of nature, fails to give us leverage on certain questions regarding life or mind. If so and we want to more deeply understand minds then we need alternatives to reductionism.

 

Rather than here argue that mind is this or mind is that, shouldn’t we be asking, “If reductionism fails us, then what are the scientifically legitimate alternatives?”

[Antlerman]

But I suspect that minds are an extension of, or elaboration of, capabilities which all organisms possess.

We're on the same page, with the technical difference that I extend that capability back down before organisms as well. But that point doesn't break the argument necessarily.

 

And I once saw where a biologist said, “Mind is to brain as life is to organism.”

I agree with this statement. It's how I see it as well. Mind is the cognizant awareness that emerges from the developed brain which can be differentiated from mere participation and connection to its environment, such as an animal being simply part of the ecosystem, that the ecosystem is essentially an extension of itself. Mind is a level above that, built upon the level of the biosphere, which is part of the ecosystem (the lizard brain), which level itself, the biosphere or 'life' as you are categorizing it, is built on the material world, the physical level, which level itself is built upon...

 

Inject here for point of illustration, that consciousness is present all the way up through the biosphere into the emergence of mind, which takes it and focuses it, processes it, looks at it, and even explores inside of it. That is what mind can do, and where the term makes sense that we are "raising our consciousness", or "new levels of consciousness".

 

That's where this goes.

 

And this is the point. Perhaps reductionism, despite its fantastic ability to probe some aspects of nature, fails to give us leverage on certain questions regarding life or mind. If so and we want to more deeply understand minds then we need alternatives to reductionism.

We are in full agreement here.

 

Rather than here argue that mind is this or mind is that, shouldn’t we be asking, “If reductionism fails us, then what are the scientifically legitimate alternatives?”

Yes. I've been hoping to bring things more to the center of this discussion. But I think maybe why in part the discussion of these issues of defining consciousness is to examine the question, if not reductionism, then what? Believe me, I've not lost sight of that question in this thread. And I feel we're coming back towards it now. If we can see there is more, then how and in what way does reductionism fail, and also in what ways does it succeed?

 

I may not have a lot of time today to respond, and hopefully I can keep up. This is indeed an excellent thread and I'm enjoying everyone's participation in it.

[Shyone]

 

Rather than here argue that mind is this or mind is that, shouldn’t we be asking, “If reductionism fails us, then what are the scientifically legitimate alternatives?”

I see reductionism as a tool to understand, but not a goal in and of itself.

 

It is not necessary, for example, to understand the chemical composition of the moon in order to know its orbit, size and mass, and geography, but it's a piece of the puzzle that curiously might be important at some later stage, or allow us to understand something about other moons or earth by comparison or extrapolation.

 

Almost every "critter" has a brain and a mind. Cockroaches are intricate, very aware, conscious, with enough memory to allow them to survive almost anything. They can move quickly and understand what "hiding" is. They can use their senses to look for nutrition, and they know enough about how to reproduce safely, even under conditions that are far from "natural", and perpetuate their species.

 

I hate to admit it, but I have been outsmarted by many a cockroach. I could probably beat them at chess, but they're too smart to play chess with me.

[Open_Minded]

Wow … I couldn’t really participate yesterday and today I come back to some excellent contributions.

 

Shyone

I think my imagery would be different from yours, but there is something magnificent about the structure of the universe, and we have only begun to touch the hem of the nature of matter and energy.

I’m in agreement with Alice – that is an absolutely beautiful statement.

 

I can also conceieve of a non-organic massive intelligence. I would insist, however, that it must have something physical that correlates with intelligence, even if it is only a type of force (e.g. weak nuclear forces, gravity, entropy, etc.).

 

Please bear with me on this following point, I am not trying to pick an argument. This “massive intelligence” we are discussing is by definition “non-local”. It is what allows one photon to know what its correlated partner is “doing” on the other side of the universe. So… whatever this non-local awareness/intelligence is – it is active at a quantum level.

 

So…effectively… we are talking about the nature of quantum reality. Here is a link to an article discussing the nature of quantum reality: http://southerncrossreview.org/16/herbert.essay.htm

 

Some physicists, disturbed by quantum theory's antirealist stance, preferred to go on believing that unobserved objects remain real, that is possessing definite attributes at all times whether these attributes are looked at or not. In this view, which I call "ordinary realism", the fuzziness in the quantum description arises not from an objective fuzziness in the attributes of quantum objects, but from the physicist's own ignorance concerning the values of unobserved attributes. Likewise the quantum jump is not a real physical event but a mere bookkeeping procedure that corresponds to the sudden increase in the observer's knowledge that occurs in the act of measurement. The gist of ordinary realism, in the words of British physicist Paul Davies is that "big things are made of little things" where "thing" means here an object that possesses definite attributes whether observed or not.

 

As attractive as this common-sense position might seem, the majority of physicists soundly reject it, holding that quantum phenomena must be taken on their own terms and not forced into outmoded philosophical molds such as ordinary realism. Quantum founding father and firm asntirealist Werner Heisenberg declared, An atom is not a thing," and compared reality-nostalgic physicists such as Einstein, Schrödinger and Prince De Broglie to believers in the Flat Earth. "The hope that new experiments will lead somehow to an objective world in time and space is as about as well founded," said Heisenberg," as the hope of discovering the edge of the earth in some unexplored region of the Antarctic."

 

In place of ordinary realism Heisenberg proposed a new picture of quantum reality--a model of what quantum objects are really doing when not being looked at--that is based on taking quantum theory seriously, not as a mere computational tool but as an actaul picture of existence at the quantum level.

 

To construct his vision of quantum reality, Heisenberg took quantum theory's vibratory possibilities literally: the attributes of unobserved objects exist, according to Heisenberg, exactly as represented in the theory--as possibilities, not actualities. The unobserrved atom does not really have a definite position, for instance, but only a tendency, an inclination, to be in several possible positions all at the same time. The unwatched atom in the Heisenberg picture, is not actually anywhere, but is potentially everywhere. In Heisenberg's view an atom is certainly real, but its attributes dwell in an existential limbo "halfway between an idea and a fact", a quivering state of attenuated existence that Heisenberg called "potentia", a world devoid of single-valued actuality but teeming with billions upon billions of unrealized possibilities.

 

Since quantum theory technically applies to everything, not just to atoms, all objects without exception must exist in this partially unreal state of "objective indefiniteness" (Abner Shimony) until someone (or something) decides to look at them. In the act of observation--called by physicists the "act of measurement"--one of the object's vibratory possibilities is promoted to a condition of full actuality, and all other possibilities vanish without a trace. Which possibility is singled out to become real during a measurement is apparently a matter of "pure chance", that is, its causes (if any) lie completely outside the world of physical law.

 

Heisenberg's strange picture of the quantum world as half-real possibilities that become actualized only during a measurement act is considered by many physicists as a most reasonable guess as to how the world deep down really operates. Certainly many more physicists subscribe to the Heisenberg picture than to the common-sense tenets of ordinary realism. To the average physicist the notion that the ordinary world spends most of its time in an unreal state is not considered preposterous. Since quantum theory describes so correctly the world we see , they argue, it would be foolish not to take seriously what it seems to be also telling us about the unseen world.

 

And… just for background information on Werner Heisenberg: http://www.chemistryexplained.com/Ge-Hy/Heisenberg-Werner.html

 

More so than any other physicist of the twentieth century, Werner Karl Heisenberg challenged our fundamental notions of the surrounding world. It could be argued that as the author of papers on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle, he nailed the coffin shut on the deterministic Newtonian version of the universe. Heisenberg replaced precision and accuracy with probabilities and uncertainties, and in so doing, he opened up the world of the subatomic to our understanding….

Heisenberg's response was his second major breakthrough: The uncertainty principle that places a limit on the accuracy with which certain properties can be simultaneously known. In particular, the simultaneous measurement of both the position and the momentum of a particle can be known only to h/4π(with h as Planck's constant). One can measure the position of a particle to an infinite level of precision, but then its momentum has an infinite uncertainty and vice versa. This sets an absolute limit on human knowledge of the physical world and leads to the idea of quantum mechanical probability.

Shyone – at a quantum level there is NOTHING physical in the sense that we usually think of physical. Even referring to non-locality as a type of force (at least in the sense that we typically think of “force”) is off the mark. What ever non-locality is – it is instantaneous, and it’s strength does not diminish over time or space.

I'm done with immaterial, invisible, and transcendent gods that are not a "part of the universe." The universe is, by definition, "all that there is."

Shyone – this statement gave me much to think about yesterday. 1stly it caused me to think about the way I use the word “transcendent”. I don’t know about Antlerman, but for me the word “transcendent” does not designate something as being separate from myself, or the universe.

 

For, me the word “transcendent” is used here in the same way that I would say love is “transcendent”. Love is something within the human experience; it is certainly NOT separate from the human experience. And yet it “transcends” us as well, we belong to love in a sense. It is “bigger” than we are, we strive for it. All human cultures hold this something that we call “love” in very high regard. At the same time it exists within the core of each of us and yet it lives larger than we do … we are constantly striving to know it more and we constantly seek it out.

 

The word “transcendent” can be used in this way for knowledge and knowing as well. These aspects of the human experience can not be confined within – there are elements to them that connect and rise above us all.

 

It is in these ways that I use the word “transcendent” in a discussion such as this. Not for one second do I think of this universal awareness as separate from “all that is”. For me, anyway, this awareness is in all, through all and beyond all in the sense that because IT is, we are .

 

When I use the word “God” I am not referring to something separate from ourselves or the universe we live in. I use the word God – not applied to something “physical” in the usual sense of the word. But, neither do I apply it to something outside of the universe and foreign to the universe.

 

My son self-identifies as Atheist. He and I are not far apart in our thinking about these things. After much discussion he teases me and tells me I’m an Atheist and says we are only separated in our thinking by semantics. So… I’m not trying to pick a fight here… I really am not. I don’t think that there is much that separates any of us in this discussion.

 

But insisting that deep reality (at the quantum level) be “physical” is asking a lot – even if you are only asking that it be a type of force. The biggest realization with quantum physics, quantum reality, is that we are being required to rethink reality. We are being required to rethink what we mean when we talk about “physical” and “forces”.

 

Legion

However I can’t claim that by seeing the deficiencies of reductionism, I can now know what all the scientifically legitimate alternatives are. If someone says our new found openness to alternatives means that we abandon all notions of causality, measurement, rigorous reasoning and language, and verification/falsification of hypotheses then I tend to reject this. I think we can have all these things and yet have approaches which differ with reductionism.

 

I don’t think anyone here is asking that we abandon all notions of causality. In fact, my understanding of legitimate science is that new knowledge and new theory encompasses and embraces the older – legitimate – knowledge. But, that new knowledge, while including older understandings, also takes us to a new level.

 

This is the way I view discussions around quantum physics and its implications in our understanding of reality. It doesn’t occur to me that Newtonian physics should be thrown out the window. However, it does require that Newtonian physics no longer be viewed as THEE picture of reality.

[Shyone]

Wow … I couldn’t really participate yesterday and today I come back to some excellent contributions.

 

This is the way I view discussions around quantum physics and its implications in our understanding of reality. It doesn’t occur to me that Newtonian physics should be thrown out the window. However, it does require that Newtonian physics no longer be viewed as THEE picture of reality.

That is some really deep stuff, and although I have heard it before, it never ceases to amaze me. Day to day, I don't need to consider quantum phenomena, but I acknowledge that they are somewhere at the bottom (floor, foundation) of reality.

 

Nonetheless, even quantum forces and interactions deal with something rather than nothing. While there is plenty of room for all kinds of weird stuff that we can't comprehend at present, I think that with or without that level of physics, it is grossly apparent that there is no personal God, and unless your definition of God is very different from the causer of floods and rain and impregnater of virgins, your God cannot exist.

 

Christianity has a tendency to slip into solipsism where the universe isn't real, but some mental image of a supernatural being. Quantum physics may sound like it supports that, but then you have to raise your head from the sub-sub-sub atomic microscope and notice that reality is real and solid even if we know atoms are mostly space.

[Legion]

I see reductionism as a tool to understand, but not a goal in and of itself.

I agree good doctor. I think it may be one means among many for gaining understanding about the natural world. If we had a tool shed which held all our scientifically legitimate approaches then I think reductionism would be among them. My question is... What other approaches are in that tool shed?

[Legion]

I don’t think anyone here is asking that we abandon all notions of causality. In fact, my understanding of legitimate science is that new knowledge and new theory encompasses and embraces the older – legitimate – knowledge. But, that new knowledge, while including older understandings, also takes us to a new level.

I agree this has happened in many cases. But I also think there can be brutal upheavals in our views which can relegate our past scientific views into near irrelevancy. I think our very notions of causality can change.

[Antlerman]

 

Rather than here argue that mind is this or mind is that, shouldn’t we be asking, “If reductionism fails us, then what are the scientifically legitimate alternatives?”

I see reductionism as a tool to understand, but not a goal in and of itself.

I think what might be helpful here is to define reductionism. I think we may be talking across each other here at times. A quick snag from Wiki on Reductionism:

Reductionism can either mean (a) an approach to understand the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b ) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.

 

I believe there is great value to be had by looking at the make up of something without introducing other non-empirical methods into the examination of it. To recognize that the approach yields value and benefit is one thing, but to extend that to support a worldview that concludes philosophically that that is all there is - the machine, and it can all be reduced down to that, that all is defined and determined by that, goes beyond the empirical method, to view it philosophically as the end all of knowledge, that it itself is and holds the keys to enlightenment for mankind and the world. That is not science but a philosophy that takes what sciences shows in its mission to explore the natural world, and extends it beyond science into a philosophy.

 

And what the point of the topic is it seems to me by the title, is that to take the tools of science and extend those tools to every aspect of existence, in fact can and does run itself into a corner where the explanatory power of it will fail. It's not this means one has to leap to the 'supernatural', but to open up to the non-empirical. Only the external surfaces of the machine are examined by empirical research, but it can by its design never explore the inside reality of it. You can measure activity in my brain, but never understand the content of it, the texture, the value, the meaning, the significance, the sense of being, etc, etc. You have to move from observer into the world of participant of that.

 

Reductionism therefore flattens the world to the external and calls that reality, the world that can be measured and tested and comprehended through the tools of reason and science. It takes the subject, and makes it the object. It takes external surface of "I" and flattens it as "IT". That is what reductionism does to the whole of the Universe. By all means measure it, but don't reduce it. It's not Reasonable.

[Legion]

Well done Antlerman!

 

I think what might be helpful here is to define reductionism. I think we may be talking across each other here at times. A quick snag from Wiki on Reductionism:

 

Reductionism can either mean (a) an approach to understand the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things

See, from my (hopefully growing) perspective, it seems to me that reductionism can only capture a shadow of what we mean when we refer to complex systems. I think reductionism cannot see complexity itself because it deliberately eliminates the possibility of it from the outset. Perhaps the formal languages used to model systems lack the necessary richness of entailment. And if we insist on saying that reductionism is the only approach in science then I think we have overly constrained our imaginations.

 

or (b ) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.

Yet can’t we safely say that at least organisms demonstrate that there are natural systems whose behavior cannot be fully accounted for by examining their parts in isolation and then adding them together?

[Open_Minded]

That is some really deep stuff, and although I have heard it before, it never ceases to amaze me.

It never ceases to amaze me, either.

 

Nonetheless, even quantum forces and interactions deal with something rather than nothing. While there is plenty of room for all kinds of weird stuff that we can't comprehend at present, I think that with or without that level of physics, it is grossly apparent that there is no personal God, and unless your definition of God is very different from the causer of floods and rain and impregnater of virgins, your God cannot exist.

We won't get into my definition of God right now, another time, another thread.... But, suffice it to say it's not the "causer of floods and rain and impregnater of virgins".

 

Christianity has a tendency to slip into solipsism where the universe isn't real, but some mental image of a supernatural being. Quantum physics may sound like it supports that, but then you have to raise your head from the sub-sub-sub atomic microscope and notice that reality is real and solid even if we know atoms are mostly space.

And there is a third option.... All is ONE.

[Antlerman]

I'm done with immaterial, invisible, and transcendent gods that are not a "part of the universe." The universe is, by definition, "all that there is."

Shyone – this statement gave me much to think about yesterday. 1stly it caused me to think about the way I use the word “transcendent”. I don’t know about Antlerman, but for me the word “transcendent” does not designate something as being separate from myself, or the universe.

 

For, me the word “transcendent” is used here in the same way that I would say love is “transcendent”. Love is something within the human experience; it is certainly NOT separate from the human experience. And yet it “transcends” us as well, we belong to love in a sense. It is “bigger” than we are, we strive for it. All human cultures hold this something that we call “love” in very high regard. At the same time it exists within the core of each of us and yet it lives larger than we do … we are constantly striving to know it more and we constantly seek it out.

 

The word “transcendent” can be used in this way for knowledge and knowing as well. These aspects of the human experience can not be confined within – there are elements to them that connect and rise above us all.

 

It is in these ways that I use the word “transcendent” in a discussion such as this. Not for one second do I think of this universal awareness as separate from “all that is”. For me, anyway, this awareness is in all, through all and beyond all in the sense that because IT is, we are .

 

When I use the word “God” I am not referring to something separate from ourselves or the universe we live in. I use the word God – not applied to something “physical” in the usual sense of the word. But, neither do I apply it to something outside of the universe and foreign to the universe.

Thank you. I've been intending to come back to address Shyone's statement. I agree with your explanation of transcendent, and it is how I am using it as well.

 

The problem with what the Christian Church did was that they took the idea of God and removed it from the natural world. God is defined as outside the creation, and becomes "supernatural". The Enlightenment then reverses focus and sees the world as being All, following suit in rejecting any views that may have existed as part of the mythic-system as 'outside' the world. Again following suit with the definitions determined by the church in its own form of reductionism of God to 'outside' the natural world.

 

This was a bastardized version of what originally came into the Church through the influence of the Greek philosophers, chiefly through the Church Father Origen from Plotinus. The philosophy of Plotinus had no such separation present, but that the Universe descends from the One as Source to the All, and that the All returns to the One as Summit in a circle. The One is both Source and Summit, Alpha and Omega, in a state of perfect non-duality. All is drawn to return to it, and All emanates forth from it.

 

The Enlightenment in its focus away from the mythic system of Religion, took the opposite side of the philosophy looking downward at the source only, rather than upward at the summit only. Flip the coin over and follow that side. What transcending that hopefully does is give a new currency to exchange within this new level we are moving into. Reductionism fails to take us there. And so does Mythic-Religion.

[Legion]

Nos narro sic nos es

 

We speak thus we are.

[Ouroboros]

Nos narro sic nos es

 

We speak thus we are.

Then "I am" a lot.

[Antlerman]

Nos narro sic nos es

 

We speak thus we are.

Then "I am" a lot.

I'd say at over 20,000 posts, you would be God.

[Shyone]

And there is a third option.... All is ONE.

 

The more I contemplate this, the better it sounds and more likely it seems.

 

I remain flabbergasted by the idea that life counts on the same tools on this planet no matter how disparate the forms of life are. It goes way beyond coincidence and becomes a question of what may be the only way to do things, but I think it shows rather that all life is interconnected and has been since the first cell.

 

Beyond that, life and inorganic matter are clearly linked. The minerals we need and the salts in our body show that we are from the earth and need the earth.

 

The very chemicals we have to work with on this planet are from the destruction of ancient suns that created these chemicals from fusion. We are stardust. (not my line - comes from The Age of Aquarius)

 

And, as I noted before, the same physical, chemical, atomic and subatomic principles apply universally across all matter, and the forces that see gravity, time and space are all tied together in some weird way.

 

So, yes, All are one.

 

And I need to lose weight.

[Legion]

Nos narro sic nos es

 

We speak thus we are.

Then "I am" a lot.

I'd say at over 20,000 posts, you would be God.

Hans is a forum god. And I’m pretty much a loud mouth too.

 

How about... Nos scisco sic nos es ?

 

We ask thus we are?

[Open_Minded]

And there is a third option.... All is ONE.

The more I contemplate this, the better it sounds and more likely it seems.

 

I remain flabbergasted by the idea that life counts on the same tools on this planet no matter how disparate the forms of life are. It goes way beyond coincidence and becomes a question of what may be the only way to do things, but I think it shows rather that all life is interconnected and has been since the first cell.

 

Beyond that, life and inorganic matter are clearly linked. The minerals we need and the salts in our body show that we are from the earth and need the earth.

 

The very chemicals we have to work with on this planet are from the destruction of ancient suns that created these chemicals from fusion. We are stardust. (not my line - comes from The Age of Aquarius)

 

And, as I noted before, the same physical, chemical, atomic and subatomic principles apply universally across all matter, and the forces that see gravity, time and space are all tied together in some weird way.

 

So, yes, All are one.

Shyone, you may - or may not - know this. But, the Aramaic word for God is Alaha. Aramaic is not like English. In Aramaic - one word can have many different meanings. But, generally speaking, when the Aramaic people of Jesus' time used "Alaha" the word carried strong connotations of unity. One way "Alaha" is translated into English is "sacred Unity".

 

I don't point this out to get under anyone's skin. As I've said before - I don't believe there is much that separates us in this discussion. But, you previously brought up a view of God that I personally don't abide by. Just as a side note.... "sacred Unity" is about the closest I can come to "defining" my understanding of God. So... in the end.... we are closer than one might think in looking at the labels we put upon ourselves.

[Shyone]

 

I don't point this out to get under anyone's skin. As I've said before - I don't believe there is much that separates us in this discussion. But, you previously brought up a view of God that I personally don't abide by. Just as a side note.... "sacred Unity" is about the closest I can come to "defining" my understanding of God. So... in the end.... we are closer than one might think in looking at the labels we put upon ourselves.

It gets really awkward when I (or other nontheists) make assumptions about a theist's beliefs, particularly when they do not follow the usual mantra.

 

Even now, with your explanation, I could well misunderstand you. It's like with Antlerman we may be saying the same things but so differently that we don't connect or understand each other well.

 

So, having said that... Oh, this is awkward... Your belief strikes me as similar to Deism. I have no problem with Deism, although my personal conclusion is that there isn't much point in considering a Deistic god or gods any more than a pantheistic god. If they don't care where you ejaculate, then why should I bother?

 

Still, if I can embrace the majesty of the universe and claim my tiny part of the whole thing, then I will do so.

[Guest Davka]

Good Lord, you people talk a lot!

 

Having slogged my way through the past 5 pages of this thread, I find myself wanting to make a few points about AI and the human brain.

 

Point one:

 

Most computers are using between 1GB and 8GB of RAM, which is memory accessible to any running program. Beyond this, they run virtual RAM from the hard drive, which is so slow as to be impractical for any kind of AI application.

 

The human brain, by contrast, has about 100,000GB (100TB) of RAM, assuming each neuron is equivalent to a single on/off bit. So when we try to create AI programs, the best we can hope to achieve might be somewhere on the order of an ant's brain. In fact, one of the most fascinating experiments I've seen is an antlike robot that has rudimentary AI problem-solving capacity - but I digress.

 

Computing power has been doubling every 18 months since the 1950s. Assuming it continues to grow at this speed, we are still about 25 years away from a computer that has enough RAM to mimic the complexity of the human brain.

 

Point two:

 

Consciousness does appear to be a function of neural complexity. I don't think anyone would claim that a single-celled animal is self-aware, and very few would claim that an insect is self-aware. But dogs? Elephants? Somewhere along the scale from single-cell to complex higher animal, we begin to see evidence of intelligence and self-awareness.

 

As to empathy, compassion, "love" - these, too, appear to be a function of complexity. Reptiles don't display empathy. Fish are pretty cold when it comes to compassion. I've never seen an ant that cared about anything beyond food and pheremones. But again, when we get to the more complex animals we start to see behavior such as sharing, grieving, and rescuing fellow creatures.

 

So what I am presenting here is an argument for reductionism. My skin cells are not aware, and neither are my individual brain cells. But collectively, they have enough processing power to host this wetware package I call "me."

 

Whether or not computers will ever become aware is still an open question. But it's one we should have an answer to in the next 20-30 years. If self-awareness is a function of complexity, then we need to wait until computers are sufficiently complex before making any judgement calls on the issue.

[Open_Minded]

First off (no pun intended)

If they don't care where you ejaculate, then why should I bother?

 

Secondly:

So, having said that... Oh, this is awkward... Your belief strikes me as similar to Deism. I have no problem with Deism, although my personal conclusion is that there isn't much point in considering a Deistic god or gods any more than a pantheistic god.

My mother considers herself a Deist. And you're right, my beliefs are not that different. But, I do consider myself a follower of Jesus - (I've studied his sayings from the Aramaic perspective). And so... because I am a follower of Jesus, I call myself "Christian". However, if one were to read through the two threads in my signature, one would find that I take great interest in the commonalities between all the world's religions. And so.... we find ourselves back at "sacred Unity" or "all is ONE".

 

Still, if I can embrace the majesty of the universe and claim my tiny part of the whole thing, then I will do so.

When my son was younger and first explaining to me that he self-identified as Atheist I could tell he was a bit nervous. Even growing up in our home where we honored all the world's religions and being exposed to a larger extended family that includes Deists and Agnostics, I could tell he was a bit nervous. I don't know if he thought I was going to crucify him, or what... But, young adults need their parent's approval more than they are often willing to admit and so I assumed it had something to do with that dynamic.

 

Anyway... I told him that in him I saw the following:

• That he treats others the way he wants to be treated himself
  
• That he sees within himself unlimited potential - and knows that he has the power to create his own life story
  
• And... that he honors one simple fact... that he is part of something larger than himself. I don't care how he identifies this "something" but he does honor it, he is in awe of it.

 

Someone who can write the following....

 

Still, if I can embrace the majesty of the universe and claim my tiny part of the whole thing, then I will do so.

And ...

I think my imagery would be different from yours, but there is something magnificent about the structure of the universe, and we have only begun to touch the hem of the nature of matter and energy.

 

.... is in awe of something larger than him/herself and that is all that matters. It keeps us humble. It reminds us that what we do to each other we do to ourselves.

 

All the rest of it is - like my son now says - pure semantics.

[Legion]

So what I am presenting here is an argument for reductionism.

Davka please forgive me if my response seems biting. I think you’re an intelligent guy, but I don’t believe you’ve presented much of an argument for reductionism. Mostly what I see here is that you’ve repeated the same dubious promises we’ve been hearing from some people for at least 60 years, that AI is 20 years away.

 

What does complexity mean to you? Why is a complex natural system complex?