The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes

A Conversation With Daniel

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moremojo:
You may be too quick for me, friend! Your intelligence is obvious, but I did not foresee you would articulate the first glimmerings of your response with such lightning speed. You must forgive if I am a bit slow in keeping up, but as we are just beginning here, let me throw out a few immediate responses to some of what you wrote:
--- Quote from: Daniel on August 03, 2007, 05:36:16 pm ---A. Not everything in the Universe can be controlled by scientific measures.
--- End quote ---
Agreed. I read once in a book (by a scientist) that science can teach us how to develop a laser, but cannot tell us where to point the laser--an elegant example, among many possible ones, of the distinct limitations of science when trying to discern ultimate truth.
--- Quote from: Daniel on August 03, 2007, 05:36:16 pm ---Now all this is to me a major indication that life (animal, vegetable, and mineral) and the organized structure of the subatomic particles and atoms which help to make up the grand network of life, is a miracle.
--- End quote ---
A miracle could be defined as that which science cannot, or least presently does not, explain or predict.
--- Quote from: Daniel on August 03, 2007, 05:36:16 pm ---We might be able to agree that purpose is an emotional sense of intention, that is of moving toward a specific goal. And likewise that meaning is an emotional or intellectual awareness of a reason or underlying basis for an activity or series of activities.
--- End quote ---
These are as good definitions of these concepts as I have encountered anywhere.

I think we're off to a grand start. And this topic cuts to the very heart of everything else, don't you think?

Daniel:
I will try to slow it down a bit, Scott. But I agree with you... (these are the types of conversations I enjoy the most, for some reason).

But now to get to the question at hand, I mentioned two aspects in my earlier threads that we can continue to explore: consciousness, and intelligence. They are of course, interrelated, but not necessarily united... I think they are very important in exploring the question of meaning and purpose in life, and if perhaps we might want to limit the scope of meaning and purpose to human life, animal life, or all life in general.  Once we've got that in hand, then we can attempt to understand what that life is and what the qualities of it are.

moremojo:
Yes, what is consciousness? Animals besides human beings clearly possess some degree of awareness (they react to stimuli, and can even be conditioned to expect certain conditions to be met), but are they conscious in any comparable way to what we humans know we possess inside ourselves?

Human consciousness seems very much tied in to the notion of time. We are ever living in the present moment, but we more often than not dwell in the past, through our memory, or anticipate the future, through our dreams and fantasies. Consciousness seems to be that which binds all our experiences and perceptions into one temporal matrix. Non-human animals seem limited, for the most part, to only living in the moment.

Was there consciousness before human beings evolved? What was it like? What was the temporal quality of time before there was anything to perceive or record it? The fact that we can infer vast domains of time having existed before human beings entered the stage might suggest a consciousness that was present all along, certainly if we subscribe to the insights of quantum mechanics which indicate that reality and consciousness are co-dependent.

Daniel:
Not all animals are limited to their specific temporal awareness. Some animals are aware that certain events happen at certain times throughout the day, and can plan their day accordingly. Usually mammals, but some birds and reptiles. This seems to indicate that the growth of consciousness, or the growth of complexity of awareness, we might say, is a natural result of biodiversification. We could use the Tielhardian concept of Noontological growth, here, but that could potentially endanger us in the acceptance of a religious viewpoint, and that I am not willing to do yet. But in the Tielhardian view, Noontological growth was the main drive of evolution...

And that is what I meant, in part, by intelligence. An increasing complexity of mineral and biological forms, and of consciousness. Perhaps it is too easy to quote Tielhard here, but I find the view refreshing and sensical: that the increasing complexity was a result of the inner complexity. We see the same effect when we look at some of the chaos theorists mathematical constructs: a pattern repeating itself, moving from simple to complex, and then recreating the same pattern in a larger forum. (There's a word for these types of drawings, but I forget what it is.)

moremojo:
Certainly, intelligence is tied in with consciousness, which has its roots in awareness. When it comes to sentient beings, there seems to be a continuum of this phenomenon, with fleeting or minimal awareness on one end and complex intelligence on the other.
--- Quote ---the increasing complexity was a result of the inner complexity
--- End quote ---
This made me think of fractals, of how how one piece of a puzzle could somehow contain the whole puzzle. Outer complexity would be the natural and expected flowering of an inherent complexity, as I understand this expression. And such a flowering would require time, would exist or be made manifest within a temporal framework.

Chaos has proven to be such a paradoxical entity, in that chaos theorists are discerning pattern within that concept or phenomenon. There seems to be method to the madness! And don't both method and madness presuppose some kind of consciousness?

Am I responding in a constructive way to your posts, Daniel? My mind goes off on tangents a lot, and I know I sometimes lose sight of the pertinent topic in a discussion.

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