Fair comment. And yet, although evolution and scientific-biology carry considerable interest, for philosophers and others, such things don’t seem relevant to metaphysics. Within philosophy as a whole, yes, they are (IMO) certainly relevant, but not so much within metaphysics.
And I will try to look into the hints and tips concerning modern biology you’ve offered me. Thanks.
It means that once you have removed and discarded the connections from a network, it is no longer a network, because those connections cannot be replaced or restored. All you have is a pile of bloodied nodes. [Yes, getting a bit poetic: guilty. ]
I thought the HP was about consciousness, but maybe I have that all wrong. For the topic title here is “Why doesn’t there seem to be a bridge between philosophy and biology?”.
For me, and such understandings as I have, “biology”, here, signifies a sort of biomechanics — biology treated as the mechanical aspects of biology. I think there is such a bridge, as there is between philosophy and any of the ‘pure’ sciences. But I do think that this biology lacks any understanding of life. IMO!!!
I disagree, in the most opposite way possible. EVERY good reduction, if it’s complete, is 100% reversible. It’s rare to get a complete reduction, as most complex stuff we deal with in our daily life is… very very challenging to reduce. But when something is cleanly reduced, it’s 100% reversible.
A great example is computing. You can reduce all computing to physical events inside a computer. And you can rebuild the abstractions, step by step, the opposite way if you understand them all.
You were supposed to read the words.
Then critique the words.
Simply implying I don’t know what I’m talking about is the lazy persons out.
Engage with the actual words and ideas.
Right because metaphysics is our mental mindscape, which is always way more fun, provocative, exciting than mundane realities of life.
It’s why it was so easy for us to fall into this utterly self-destructive mindset, that is abusing our life support system to the point of collapse. I don’t see where our current self-indulgent overdose of metaphysics has done our children and other creatures any good.
Remember I identify as an Earth centrist, she belongs in my family as much as wife and kids.
Hmmm. More confusion. Hard Problem - philosophy~biology - consciousness. Seems like a trinity to me.
Sorry, my mind is working in the rut of intellectual reductionism, scientific reductionism. You seem to be discussing something else.
Challenge remains: What is the so-called Hard Problem all about, if not our inability to get inside the skin of another?
Ecological disaster is the fault of metaphysics? I thought it was corporate greed, the failure of regulation and the buying of democratic influence, or something?
You don’t think it starts with human refusal to face its own self-absorption and self-serving nature that blinds us to everything outside of our immediate perceived interest?
Seems metaphysical to me.
Descartes was writing for the Catholic Church, with his ideas having the specter of god woven through with Nagels and Chalmers, following with same sense of human exceptionalism, that the longing for God, morphed into longing for the Answer to Everything, the illusion of perfection. And so on.
Fair enough not liking Descartes, but did he go around cutting down trees and spitting at vegetarians? I’m struggling to see the connection
We’ll, if you’re saying that the solution to current world problems lies in science more than metaphysics, I might agree with you. Although we all know the science and it’s made bugger all difference. And I don’t think the captains of industry are all that interested in the mind body problem.
Descartes time formed our world. Catholic Church, White exceptionalism, race across the globe to bring God to heathens, and return with all the plunder they can could possibly load up and haul home. One thing leads to another.
Where did “the haves” ever care about anything beyond themselves, except when external forces made it expedient to share some crumbs with the rabble. That, I believe, would have been worth some serious metaphysical soul searching - but it would have dried up funding in a hurry. So here we are.
It took unimaginable effort to create America’s imperfect Democracy. The government it formed demanded an informed and engaged public. Instead we were talked into taking our amazing US Constitutional government of laws - and ripping it up, because it was too easy to blame the system, and not its practitioners, nor ourselves, the apathetic citizens.
Blame the populous because philosophy is self indulgent and a tad lazy, thus avoiding our really big questions, issues - preferring to beat dead horses that should have been buried long ago? Sorry don’t mean to be rude, but there it is.
And still no one is willing to explicitly explain what it is they think I’m missing about the Hard Problem - Why is it that we can’t experience the experience that something else is experiencing? Because it’s simply impossible.
Why are we on an awareness/consciousness-spectrum with every other living organism on this Earth? Because none of us would have been possible without that ability to begin with!
Oh but I know there are deep-thinkers convinced consciousness is rare. Guess it’s possible to be deep and still have blind spots.
I don’t think all the metaphysics in our heads can erase those simple physical fundamentals.
That’s a good question, and it may well be related to the hard problem, but it’s not the hard problem. The hard problem is about how consciousness can arise from non-conscious stuff. Your answer appears to be the Krebs cycle, is that right?
Sure, but I think you are wrong in your statement which is what I responded to.
A reaction is non-deliberative in this context. A response is deliberated. Cells react. Sentient beings (can) respond. But so too, do they react, all too often. So your question about a line is a good one, but it is misplaced imo.
No The Krebs cycle is the birth of biology, via the capture and harnessing of energy, which made what follows possible.
Keep in mind “what follows” was billions of years of trial and error and culling. Then came the Eukaryotic cell and things started moving faster.
Somewhere in between forming first simple cells and finally getting to the Eukaryotic cell - awareness, “I Am” arrived, most probably starting as simple chemotaxis, homeostasis networks, but as systems evolved other internal communication processes developed. And kept developing in step with creature complexity developed.
I think it would be misleading to claim that ALL cells can do is react. After all we are talking about an evolving system - it started with many short comings, but with time, those were ironed out, and pure reaction, started taking on interpretive processes, since cells were confronted with ever more complex tasks and challenges.
After all, consider the difference between and prokaryotic cell and an eukaryotic cell. Then cellular communities, before actually creatures were created.
A few points to make, so I’ll start at the end. Where else?
I identify as a Universe centrist. Same as you, but I believe the life of the Earth is just part of the life of the Universe. All of it is alive, I believe. For practical purposes, our beliefs are much the same, I think.
With “metaphysics”, I have to be a bit careful. For the word is often informally, (by me, and others) used to refer to those matters that are not usefully or meaningfully open to a more-or-less-scientific treatment. Of course, this isn’t strictly correct.
And yet I don’t really think you’re right, or fair, to blame metaphysics for human greed. Our poor home is in such a bad state because we have taken the world for our use, to do with as we wish, instead of sharing it with the myriad of species who also live(d) here. And this is so because we always want MORE. This, and the fact that we have built our world to centre on money, and nothing else.
I’m not entering a crusade here, but a reply seems appropriate.
Even as you say yourself, most “stuff we deal with in our daily life is… very very challenging to reduce.” And your idea of reductionism doesn’t make as much sense to me as it might. That’s probably my fault.
But your software example is mistaken, displaying your ignorance of what software design is all about. [I spent 40+ years learning to be a software designer.] You can reduce any executable to physical events, but you cannot rebuild the source code or the documentation — or the understanding that they carry — from a compiled executable.
“You can rebuild the abstractions, step by step, the opposite way if you understand them all.”
In philosophical reductionism, nobody’s saying that a compiled executable is the reduced source-code. That’s not what reductionism is about. That seems like a complete (accidental, no doubt) straw man.
I’ve never heard of philosophical reductionism. I’m familiar only with that small part of the scientific method that we call “reductionism”, whereby we cut away and discard all that we don’t want, hoping to reach more easily some understanding of what is left. “Divide and conquer”, as the proverb says.
If my words constitute a straw man, then you have my apologies. But I don’t really understand how what I said qualifies for that description. Can you help me out?
A compiled executable is a completely different thing from the source code. One isn’t a reduction of the other.
A reduction of something is looking at a chair and ‘reducing’ it, in your understanding, to interactions of atoms and chemicals and physics. Taking the abstraction of a ‘chair’, and understanding it in terms of the more fundamental things that make up a chair.
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