Biology as a surrogate for philosophy.
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The mind certainly is natural.
If everything is natural, what does the word do for us? “Natural things” is redundant.
Still, humans categorize. As the song says, we identify, clarify, and classify. We recognize a difference between things humans made that would never be made without us, things not made by us. What words would be better than the problematic “naturally” and “unnatural”?
I will take issue with that. Why? Because nowhere in nature can you observe a mind, as such. You can observe intelligent behavior in plenty of species, and can infer that this implies that the creatures are intelligent or have minds. But the nature of mind is another matter altogether (hence the interminable arguments over the ‘problem of consciousness’, and let’s not start another.)
Secondly, I think its a popular current fallacy that humanity is continuous with nature or a part of nature. I mean, on a physical level, if you were cast into a ‘survivor’ type of situation without any of the technologies or tools of modernity and had to survive on your wits, then depending on where you had fetched up, you would certainly suffer and almost certainly perish from starvation in short order. Humans are separated from nature, in that sense, by tens of thousands of years of enculturation and adaption to living in non-natural environments.
But metaphysicallly the gulf is even more profound. Nature is nowadays looked upon as a kind of surrogate for purity, spontaneity and unspoiledness. It has become to all intents a deity in modern culture. ‘Natural’ is opposed to ‘artificial’ as a signifier of wholesomeness and the elusive ‘one-ness’ which we’re sure lies at least somewhere over the rainbow, or at least beyond the glare of artificial lighting.
This is from Max Horkheimer (1947) - one of the founders of the ‘Frankfurt School’, the ‘new left’ that today’s right villifies as the source of much that is wrong with liberal intellectual culture (so, no friend of religion.)
The idea inherent in all idealistic metaphysics–that the world is in some sense a product of the mind–is thus turned into its opposite: the mind is a product of the world, of the processes of nature. Hence, according to popular Darwinism, nature does not need philosophy to speak for her: nature, a powerful and venerable deity, is ruler rather than ruled. Darwinism ultimately comes to the aid of rebellious nature in undermining any doctrine, theological or philosophical, that regards nature itself as expressing a truth that reason must try to recognize. The equating of reason with nature, by which reason is debased and raw nature exalted, is a typical fallacy of the era of rationalization. Instrumentalized subjective reason either eulogizes nature as pure vitality or disparages it as brute force, instead of treating it as a text to be interpreted by philosophy that, if rightly read, will unfold a tale of infinite suffering. Without committing the fallacy of equating nature and reason, mankind must try to reconcile the two.
In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature–even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man–frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy.
(That said, humans are biologically continuous with the rest of nature, but they are not therefore intelligible solely in biological terms. Homo sapiens has transcended biology in the sense that biological description no longer exhausts the modes of explanation required to understand the human condition.)
This is an interesting post.
The thing is, we recognise real things that are “physical”, and some that are “mental”, and therefore quite invisible. It’s like ‘invisible disabilities’ — we are often reluctant to recognise or accept them, without the evidence of our senses. The mind is not unique in this 
respect.
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Philosophy does not speak “for” nature, or anything else. Philosophy speaks to us, to humans. Nature is the Master, the Reference, so yes, “ruler rather than ruled”.
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Agreed. But is this not just as true for, say, rattus rattus?
This excellent paragraph is my point. But I would not make it parenthetical. If humans evolved on this planet, then we are natural. Evolution is a natural process. I do not see how natural things and processes can create something unnatural any more than I can see how physical things and processes can create something non-physical (consciousness). Everything you say is true. But it must be interpreted from the starting point that we are natural things.
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No I mean biology as a window to the reality of appreciating the
“Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide”
It is important because philosophy untethered from physical reality, looks from the outside as simply another form of theology—expect rather than the Glory of God, it’s subject is worship of the Glory of our Human Intellect.
Okay, so it’s only behavior that reflects a “mind” - we are only privy to our own mind.
We humans are used to working with incomplete evidence - we do the best we can with what we have. So I don’t understand the drama.
I saw perfect brought up in the above discussion - isn’t that another mirage that we can talk about, but that does not exist. Unless we talk about the precision of nature, but nature doesn’t care two hoots about our notions of perfect, nor our creature needs, so her perfection in motion is far from what we want perfection to be
That is a philosophical not a biological distinction.
This shows no understanding of philosophy whatsoever. Until the 1830’s what is now science was known as ‘natural philosophy’, and naturalism is a school of philosophy.
I previously pointed out that humans are separated from nature by culture. We live in a culture that is built on artificial products, such as plastic, which don’t exist at all in the natural world. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) specifically searches for the chemical signatures of non-naturally occuring products as evidence for advanced civilizations. So there’s already a division between natural and artificial.
There’s another division between natural and supernatural. Of course it is true that the supernatural as a category is generally rejected in secular culture, as that is a definining feature of secular culture. But religious cultures (which astonishing as it may seem still exist) are founded on the basis of revealed religion which purports to originate from a source superior to nature (hence, supernatural).
Finally, in philosophy, there are critiques of naturalism, too elaborate and complicated to try and spell out in a forum post. And finally saying that ‘everything is natural’ means what, exactly? A theory that describes everything describes nothing because it lacks specificity.
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I have found this to be true,yes.
We are the mind attempting to understand itself at this level of conscious experience…And to state that “nowhere in nature can you observe a mind, as such.” is close to a denial of - not only the mindfulness in the experience of humanity but - once recognised and accepted - one then starts to observe the same in much of what we call “nature” or “Mother Earth”…
Philosophy does not speak “for” nature, or anything else. Philosophy speaks to us, to humans. Nature is the Master, the Reference, so yes, “ruler rather than ruled”.
Indeed, and what does that signify should She be a real conscious entity…the mind begins to boggedly “gook”…
“Gook” is a good word. Going down the rabbit hole to have a gook at things…
Agreed. But is this not just as true for, say, rattus rattus?
we can make our toys speak - maybe it is a subconscious recognition for how we ourselves are somewhat
puppets"…
…Gook it…
The reason for this is apparent in the fact the we humans are looking for a reason for ourselves existing and the question of whether we exist in a created thing (theism) or not (atheism) and philosophy survives because the answer has not yet been resovled.
In any case, who is to say that humans celebrating their intelligent existence is not a “Glory To God” thing? Most theists would disagree from their position, that the celebrating isn’t the problem. It is the celebrating without the inclusion of the overall Mind Field - an acknowledgment which conveys the idea that there is more to mindfulness than simply the human being alone - while the rest of the universe is oblivious to itself. What a strange phenomena.
One easily enough sorted but one has to be carful not to be lead astray by the tainted “god made in the image of man” routines seeping from the theistic platform. Gook for “misinformation”…
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She is. I venerate Her, as God, by the name of Gaia, or Gaea. 
Yes, “gook” is a good word. 
Yes I know this.
Mind you I’m not a professional.
My feeling are influenced by today’s public facing, media delivered philosophy for public consumption.
Dang, I like how you worded that.
Indeed. That’s worth cutting out and chewing on.
Worth adding is that the universe out there (to the best of current knowledge) remains lifeless (with life only being conceivable upon a certain class of objects - where an amazing series of luck and coincidences creates physical condition for life to occur.)
Guess my point is that,
they don’t call Earth the Miracle Planet for nothing. This “greater mindfulness” you mention is the product of this unique planet, within this unique solar system. All life on this planet evolved hand in hand to create a biosphere. All driven by this weird biological Drive to Thrive and time pushing evolution along.
I’d love to see how a philosopher would processes the fact that they posses half a billion years worth of evolutionary progress within their own body?
Yes well there is no doubt that She is a God. If one were to source where all these ideas of divine beings derive - that would be the first place to look.
I call Her “QueenBee” but She calls herself by many names…
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No one can say with any certainty that the mindfulness derives from the planet form, just as we cannot say with any certainty that human mindfulness derives from the human form - iow that consciousness somehow emerged from form.
What we can say is that the experience of being a planet or a human influences the way the mindfulness is shaped…
Thanks, but I’d like to disagree.
That is not what I said.
I said this planet evolving created special conditions that allowed life not just to start (as a kid I was told we’d never figure out the mechanisms origins, but now it’s well trodded ground), with the consensus that simple life is probably relatively common out there within “certain” types of planets. But getting to the next seminal breakthrough of functional complexity, within the eukaryotic cells that Earth achieved, looks like an astronomically tiny fraction.
Then creatures appeared that needed to meet challenges and hurdle obstacles (conceivably possibly unique in the history of star and planet formation.) - This is where the need to make decisions arose. That requires a degree of awareness. It probably started as simple homeostasis chemotaxis. Then deep time marched on, and complexity evolved, with differentiation of duties, driven by survival needs and “feelings” and interacting with environment and other creatures.
All the physical evidence point at our biological body producing its own Mind, starting simple, ending up with something like us by way of interacting with the world around it.
A species that repays the wonder of its body/brain by turning around and destroying its own miracle planet home. With nary a qualm.
Sure poetry is wonderful, but that’s not the way to understand Evolution and its significance to us. Nor the Self for that matter.
Oh “the way”…
What I am saying is that we cannot ignore that what is being observed must be interpreted only one way.
Is this really what you mean? That observations must be interpreted in ONE AND ONLY ONE way?
No. That is not just what I wrote. Please don’t truncant my words.
My full statement was: ‘we cannot ignore the possibility that what is being observed must be interpreted only one way.’
The key phrase is ‘the possibility that.’ I was not saying that observations must be interpreted only one way. I was saying that we cannot ignore the risk that we might treat our interpretation as the only possible one - and that this risk is present in all inquiry, including science.
This is not a denial of evolution, or of evidence, or of science. It is a caution against dogmatism. It is a reminder that interpretation is always involved, and that we must be humble about our assumptions.
I hope that clarifies my position.
I was just trying to confirm that I had parsed your words correctly. It seems I didn’t, so thanks for the clarification.